We realise that in the recent months our foster parents have been bombarded
with orphan rescue stories. In our previous history seven rescues in a year was
considered a busy year, but we have been receiving more than seven orphaned
elephants in a month these past months. The reasons are the dramatic
combination of drought, human wildlife conflict exacerbated by the drought, and
the ever growing poaching threat. While these rescue updates are not specific
to your chosen orphan, each story is both heart wrenching and heart-warming for
many individuals and communities have gone to great lengths in order to save
these orphaned babies, and their stories, along with the acts of heroism and
compassion threaded through them, need to be shared. The rescue of a baby
elephant on the 4rd August 2009 was one of the more dramatic rescues. The 4
month old calf must surely rank as both the luckiest and unluckiest of elephant
babies – lucky to have been found intact in the very remote and hostile region
around South Turkana National Reserve and unluckiest to have been born into an
area inhabited by wild and warring pastoral people of the Pokot and Turkana
tribes who are constantly in conflict over the sparse resources centred around
land and livestock, and have been so since time immemorial. Theirs is a
forgotten Wild West frontier in Kenya where wildlife lives in a perpetual war
zone, made that much worse by the fact that in this remote area almost every
male tribesman now carries not a spear, or bows and arrows, but an AK47 machine
gun, and uses it with impunity.

The Trust received the rescue alert from the Kenya Wildlife Service during the
evening of the 3rd August, too late to initiate a rescue that day. The rescue
team therefore left at 7am the following morning (4th August) and after a 2 hour
plane journey landed at the Turkwel Airstrip, near the Nasalot and South Turkana
National Reserves, at 9:30am where they had to await the arrival of the calf.
Gunshots were heard in the distance, so this delay on the ground was nerve
wracking to say the least.

Even more nerve wracking was the rescue of the calf. The Deputy Warden of the
Nasalot and South Turkana National Reserves Mr. Nduati James organized a very
high risk and brave rescue of the little elephant, who had been spotted alone
near the Wei Wei River and was heading into an extremely high conflict zone. A
protected team of Rangers, escorted by armed paramilitary personnel of both the
General Service Units and Police set off to retrieve the calf as it approached
the Juluk area where they risked attack by armed bandits who had blocked all
roads leading into the area. It took the team all morning to clear the roads of
obstructions in order to get a vehicle to the calf.

Unfortunately wildlife is caught in the middle of a very serious and ongoing
tribal conflict for in order to access water and feeding grounds the animals
have to cross the Kerio valley corridor to enter Nasalot Game Reserve from Romoi
Game Reserve, where they are caught in the crossfire of the warring Pokot and
Turkana people.

Elephants especially are a prime target – their tusks used as barter for guns,
sold to unscrupulous middlemen of the infamous Ivory trade, their meat used to
feed the rebels and others living in this impoverished region, where life on the
edge is exacerbated by severe drought. It is, in fact, a miracle that any
elephant still manage to exist in this conflict zone.

We named our latest little living miracle Turkwel. She is the third elephant
orphan we have from the area. “Nasalot” of Yatta’s Ithumba unit being one and
Ajok who came to us in 1990 the other. She is a very gently and loving little
elephant who has been embraced by all at the Trust, both her little elephant
peers as well as the humans.

To view more photographs from Turkwel's rescue click on this link:
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp?N=221

To foster Turkwel please click on this link: https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/foster.asp?nn=1&G=&LP=922009750-pic7a.jpg&addn=221&N=221&FN=Turkwel