It was now 11 a.m.; the team had been gone for three hours. It was impossible to know how long the wait would be; a call could come at any moment, or else not for another five hours. Looking in my rear-view mirror I could see the Elephant Alive team passing the time playing cards. This was not an unfamiliar scenario to them. Anyone with any experience of wildlife work quickly learns how to pass endless hours of waiting. It could infuriate some, but for me there was something magical and wonderful about just being out in the African bush and waiting for that call to action: the job you had come to do, and an experience that would become a treasured memory for the rest of your life.
The perfect peace and tranquillity was suddenly lost as a whispering voice crackled across the radio. It was Lyle.
‘We’ve located them, 100 metres in front of us. Ben and Andres are making an approach to get close enough to dart. I will send through our GPS location. Stand by.’
‘Roger that,’ I replied.
My two passengers were instantly roused and ready to go. I climbed out of the truck to relay the news to the others. From the GPS coordinates we could plan how best to access them and how close we could get in with the vehicles. But there was no guarantee that this would be their final location. The elephants might spook, leading to several more hours of tracking, and even if darted, they could still travel about 2 km in the eight minutes it took for the dart to take effect. We had to be ready to respond instantly.
A further half an hour passed before we heard anything, but then Lyle came back on the radio.
‘They’ve just darted one. He hasn’t fled, but is moving off. Ben and Andres are following him – but come to the location I sent you.’ The relief in his voice was evident. It was difficult to speculate what exactly had happened, but it had obviously been a very tense time.
I passed on the information, and then jumped behind the driver’s seat. As we set off I pulled over to let Jess, who was driving the Elephants Alive team vehicle, take the lead. They had been patrolling the area for over a month now and had an intimate knowledge of the arterial network of tracks in this thick maze of bush and rocks – though to call them ‘tracks’ was a generous description. They were more like an area in this thick bush where there was slightly less flora and a few more rocks.
Within moments the truck in front was invisible amid the haze of dust it generated. Jess wasn’t hanging about, and with large boulders partially blocking the route in places, it took all my concentration to navigate these obstacles at speed to stay on her tail.
Ten minutes later we arrived at the GPS location. Lyle was standing by the side of the road, gun at the ready.
‘He’s gone down over there.’ He pointed off into the thick bush to our right. ‘Fortunately, he only travelled about 200 metres after he was darted, so he’s just a few minutes away by foot. The two others seem to have fled, but I’ll escort you just in case they decide to come back for their mate.’ It was a matter-of-fact comment, but the way he left it hanging conjured images in my mind of what that would be like, and I knew it would be utterly terrifying.
Even the ostensibly simple job of placing a radio collar on an elephant required a fair amount of equipment. For starters, the collar itself was about 6 inches wide, half an inch thick and 10 feet long. Then there was the counterweight, weighing in at about 15 kg, which would be attached to the collar on the underside of the elephant’s neck to stop it slipping when the elephant moved. Not to mention the portable angle grinder, an electric drill, and lengths of metal cable and cable ties that were all essential for making the job as quick and efficient as possible. The danger was extreme – not because the anaesthetic might fail, but because every passing moment that this bull elephant was separated from his fellows increased the risk of their returning to find him.
We headed into the bush lugging the boxes of equipment, with Lyle directing us from the rear, gun at the ready, as he carefully and systematically studied every direction for signs of imminent danger. Fortunately none came, and after five minutes of negotiating trees, bushes, a ditch and thick undergrowth, we arrived at the darted elephant. At about twenty-five years of age, he was a sub-adult, but at such close quarters his size was still formidable. Lying on his right side, trunk fully extended, he had gone down perfectly in a small clearing and was sleeping soundly. With every breath came a booming snore that reverberated through his trunk and filled our otherwise silent surroundings. Ben and Andres had already covered his upper eye with his large leafy ear to minimize external stimulation, and placed a carefully constructed twig in the end of his trunk to keep it unobstructed and to ease his breathing.
Once we had absorbed the initial beauty and majesty of the animal sleeping in front of us, we set about fixing the collar. First, the metal cable was fed under his neck, using cable ties to secure it to the collar itself, which we were then able to pull back through, under his neck. Next, we measured it for size, ensuring the transmitter would sit on the top of his neck, and allowing a gap of two hand-breadths between the collar and his neck so that it wasn’t too tight. The counterweight was then fitted and bolted to the collar, the excess length of the bolts and the collar were removed with the angle grinder, and the job was done. It took no more than ten minutes in total. While Ben, Jess and I had been fixing the collar, the others had been gathering various data on the animal for Elephants Alive’s records and database, our safety all the while guaranteed by Lyle’s careful patrol of the area.
The equipment was finally gathered up and people started heading back to the trucks. Drawing up the reversal drug into a 2-ml syringe, Ben handed it to me.
‘You can wake him up now.’
‘OK,’ I replied. I waited till everyone was a safe distance away, then found one of the large ear veins and injected the Naltrexone into it, before heading back in the direction of the truck to join Ben by a tree 100 metres away, from where we could safely monitor the elephant’s recovery. Within a minute he was attempting to lift his head and gain some purchase on the ground with his feet. He had a few failed attempts at lifting his head, rocking himself onto his chest, but within a further minute he had done so and from there he was soon on his feet. Happy that he was alive and well, and with the collar secured, we scurried back to the truck, and rapidly withdrew.
Once back at the farm, Jess got out her iPad to show us a map of the area, on which could now be seen the route the elephant had taken since waking up and wandering off. The tracking collar was working. Phase One was complete.
The following Friday we returned to the farm for Phase Two: relocation. The logistics of this operation were truly massive, including two helicopters, three flatbed trailers, a crane, a JCB, the capture team, the veterinary team, the Elephants Alive team, and a television crew. The local highways authorities had also been informed, and a road escort arranged.
When we arrived at the farm at 6.30 a.m. there was already a fleet of vehicles and a crowd of people milling around. It was such an exciting and rare event that the Elephant Alive volunteers, some veterinary students and friends of those involved in the procedure, had all come along to witness it. There must have been thirty people there already, and that was without the capture team, helicopter pilots and many of the other essential participants.
We headed over to greet Michelle, the senior member of the Elephants Alive team and key coordinator of the operation. We had met her at the first collaring attempt, but she hadn’t been at the second, successful one because she was attending the funeral of Wayne Derek Lotter, the great wild-life and elephant conservationist who had been tragically murdered two weeks before. Amazingly bravely, his wife and two daughters had decided to participate in this relocation as a way of honouring Wayne’s memory, and Michelle had asked them if they would allow the three elephants to be named after him. It was a wonderful gesture for a man who had worked tirelessly for twenty-seven years and ultimately given his life to protect Africa’s wildlife, and elephants in particular.