There’s been a killer on the loose in Amboseli, one that we couldn’t have arrested with all the rangers in the world. Some species were hit harder than others; the death toll is more than 150 elephants, and an estimated 3,000 zebra and 1,700 wildebeest.

The killer – a severe drought - will shape a generation of wildlife and people. The old and weak died first. For elephant families, the death of the wise and experienced individuals is a devastating loss of leadership and survival knowledge.

Many Maasai families have lost more than 50% of their livestock, which is where most store their wealth. Kids have dropped out of school because their parents couldn’t afford to pay the fees, while others have sold their land to make ends meet.

Against this awful backdrop, there is no single word to describe the return of the rains. Joy. Relief. Ecstasy. The sound of thunder, and the smell of the dry earth taking a long drink from the skies. On cue, herbivores have started dropping their calves. Babies abound. Everything is changed.

It’s far too soon to say that this drought is over, but the widespread showers the last two weeks have brought a semblance of calm. With most of the rainy season still ahead, the landscape is already turning green in the first sign of the recovery process.

We’ve been here long enough to know that no matter how bad things get, nature will recover. But we’ve also learned not to get too excited too soon, and we’ll wait to see if the rains keep coming.

Photo: Jeremy Goss

While on a routine foot patrol, Big Life rangers noticed something odd. To a casual observer, the male giraffe looked fine. But to a trained ranger, danger lurked. Dangling from his neck was a large and potentially lethal wire snare. It hadn’t yet cut any skin, but it would only be a matter of time before it would tighten and threaten this magnificent creature’s life.

Our Rapid Response Unit monitored the giraffe while the Big Life Radio Room alerted the Sheldrick-funded KWS vet, who immediately set out to help with treatment.

Since the snare hadn’t tightened, medical treatment wasn’t necessary, so the giraffe did not need to be completely sedated. Instead, five grown men worked to keep his head safely on the ground while the wire was cut. For such a large animal, it was no small feat. Events like this underscore the critical role our ranger teams play in safeguarding the wildlife across this entire ecosystem, 365 days a year, year after year.

Photos: Josh Clay

Crickets sing, a hyena calls out into the night, and dogs yap nervously in response. Then they hear it: a low grumble. It is what the Big Life rangers stationed along the electric fence have been straining their ears for. It’s 9 PM and they have been patrolling a fence section that in the past few months has been visited almost nightly by groups of bull elephants with one thing on their minds: crops.

“This used to be their highway to Tsavo,” explains Mayani, the Mobile Unit 2 Driver. But that route has changed, as human development has changed the landscape. Today, farmers have settled to grow crops on the fertile foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. And conflict between elephants and farmers was becoming deadly.

To protect both elephants and people, a solution needed to be found. A solar-powered electric fence was constructed by Big Life in 2016 in response to the surge in conflict between elephants and the farmers. The fence line was erected where the most amount of conflict was happening, the epicentre of human-elephant conflict in Amboseli. This line helps redirect elephants to safety through the Kimana Corridor, and onwards to Chyulu and Tsavo beyond.

On this night, two Big Life ranger vehicles work to push 10 enormous bull elephants away from a crop of maize. The following morning, the Big Life fence team repaired the section of fencing that was broken by these peckish pachyderms attempting to access the crop, while another team went to inspect the damage.

Because of their intelligence, persistence, and considerable strength, it is almost impossible to prevent full-grown elephants from doing what they want, and while the fence has stopped crop raiding by more than 90% in the areas where it was built, there are a select few bull elephants who have become professional fence breakers.

Staying ahead of them has become a full on “arms race” but is increasingly important for everyone’s safety, human and elephant, as the drought rages on.

Thank you for supporting our rangers and fence program, so that we can continue to keep the peace and keep retaliation against elephants to a minimum.

Photo: Josh clay

It’s no secret that elephants are smart and negotiating with them is as much an art as a science. Careful planning and strategy are needed.

When elephants raid farms they risk the spears of angry farmers, and we use several tactics to avoid this. To start, our mobile ranger units patrol high-risk areas at high-risk times, using their vehicles to intercept elephants and direct them away from farms. At night rangers will use strobes lights and thunder flashes (firecrackers) to startle elephants back to safety.

In the areas with the highest rates of conflict, we erected a physical barrier: 100 km of solar-powered electric fencing. The design features short (3 ft) posts with long, angled outrigger wires, intended to stop elephants from climbing over or pushing through. However, the smarter bull elephants have learned how to get through, going so far as to dig up and break the buried ground wire, thereby rendering the fence ineffective.

Although these ‘fence-breaks’ are frustrating, the fence is still extremely effective and conflict has dropped by 90% along that line, saving farmer’s crops and elephant’s lives. Keeping this fence operational is a full-time job, and one we’re happy to do with your support.

There are other ways of negotiating with elephants. Their trunks and eyes are sensitive, and we’ve been testing an experimental fence made of rags infused with chili oil, that deters elephants but is not harmful. The process is time-intensive and the potency wears off quickly, but it’s an interesting alternative in the right circumstances.

Elephants also hate bees, and beehive fences have shown promising results in other parts of Africa. They are best used on smaller individual farms and are unfortunately impractical at the scale needed in our case. It would be impossible to maintain a single unbroken beehive fence (complete with occupied hives) along the 100+ km that we manage, and we know from experience how quick elephants are to exploit weaknesses.

We also know that there is no silver bullet for solving human-elephant conflict. Elephants are smart and always learning, and we try our best to do the same.

Photos: Jeremy Goss