Target: The President,Republic of Kenya,The Prime Minister,The Minister in charge of wildlife

Sponsored by: Daniel Kuria

Poachers kill a grand dame of a great elephant family 11 March, 2011
12 gun shots tore through the night near the Save the Elephants (STE) research camp in Samburu National Reserve, signaling the death of the elephant , a sub-group matriarch from a family of elephants know as the "Virtues"

Sadly, Hope had been observed just minutes before paying her respects to the remains of a dead family member, named "Resilience", gunned down by poachers last week. STE founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton and a National Geographic film crew were in the area when the shooting took place, having just been to film the remains of the dead elephant Resilience and discovering its living relative mourning its death.

Elephants have strong social and family ties and are very distressed when family members die. They have often been observed revisiting the remains of family members many years after their death,

says Douglas-Hamilton. The elephant Hope had sought out her family member remains to grieve, and we were shocked to learn that she herself was killed only moments later.

Once the crew returned to camp for sunset, an STE scout phoned to inform Douglas-Hamilton that 12 gun shots were heard in the area in the space of five minutes. Distressingly, elephants could be heard screaming and later, the sound of ivory being hacked out in the dark.

The STE team informed the park wardens and the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) immediately, who rushed to the scene only to discover the body of Hope lying in the middle of the road, with tusks hacked out.

Hope was one of the last old females from the Virtues family of elephants which STE has been studying for the last 15 years. The family has been decimated by poachers, with the chief matriarch, Resilience, sprayed with bullets and killed only last week, said Douglas-Hamilton.

Last week, Resilience was spotted in great distress by tourists in the Samburu National Reserve. Her body had been sprayed with bullets, but she had managed to escape the poachers. Sadly, STE and KWS were forced to put her down because of the extent of her injuries.

The authorities are now on the hunt to catch the criminals, having extracted bullets from the bodies of both elephants. However the proximity of Isiolo town will make detection extremely difficult.

These recent killings are just part of a spate of poaching in Kenya, and point to the precarious situation facing Africa%u2019s elephants. As part of the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, STE assess the cause of death of every elephant in Samburu to monitor poaching levels and population health. With the building of a road by a Chinese construction company in the area, we are finding more elephants poached for both for ivory and other body parts, possibly for Chinese medicine. Poachers are becoming far more organized and armed with sophisticated weapons and night vision equipment.

It was feared that Hope's three calves were also dead, being too young to look after themselves and not present in the area. The STE team followed the blood trail for 3 kms into impenetrable bush to try and help them. Thankfully, the calves managed to escape the poachers, and were discovered in the care of a breeding female, without any injuries.

Report Courtesy of Save the Elephant Project

http://www.savetheelephants.org

Please go to: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/25/stop-the-cruelity/ and sign the petition.

The story of the poaching of the matriarch, Hope, is tied into the article, also posted by Jan on Bushdrums: "Kenya: Alarm Raised Over Loss of Wild Animals" which appears in Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper.

A few days ago, I took a moment to post a comment on the Daily Nation's site regarding this news item. I stated that it seemed "anywhere there were Chinese road crew camps - that suddenly there was an great upsurge in elephant and rhino poaching in parks/reserves and private conservancies....as well as increase in bushmeat poaching and even the disappearance of locals cats and dogs".

My email lasted a couple of hours and I checked back to see if anyone had responded to my comment. I was surprised that the Daily Nation newspaper TOOK MY COMMENT OFF THEIR FORUM BOARD. Apparently naming the Chinese as being behind the poaching was too much for them. They did leave two emails which blamed the poaching on "trophy hunters"....which is not correct as the poaching of elephants and rhinos is for their tusks and horns for Chinese carvings and so-called 'medicines'. To me this shows how even the newspapers are being told to shut up and to cover up Chinese complicity in these atrocious killings of Kenya's precious wildlife.

Thanks Kat for posting your experience, bad as it was. Since The Standard was raided several years ago by government thugs, my guess is the press is afraid to post anything that could rile the government.

I can't understand how the African politicians can appear so ignorant as to not see through the China connecton and the upsurge in poaching. Perhaps they feel the loss of wildlife is a "small" price to pay for what they are getting from China. It will eventually dawn on them when China has taken all their natural resources and wildlife and then it will be too late, because all the tourists who have been coming to see their magnificent wildlife, will be going to other places who do care.