An Elephant Is Down - One Afternoon in the Serengeti

reported by Dorothy Preslar, Director, AHEAD/ILIAD Project

UPDATE - APRIL 2001

A trip back to the TANAPA veterinary lab at the Serengeti ranger station in March 2001 provided a unique opportunity to follow up on the investigation into the death of the young bull elephant that prompted the 1998 report below. Three years before, after returning to the U.S., I had tried through e-mail communication to find out if the blood samples taken that afternoon in the Serengeti indicated any disease. Since only smears were made from blood taken from the elephant's ear and no tissue was collected, it was possible that there was a suspicion of anthrax, which had during February and March 1998 killed thousands of kudu.

Remembering I had never received a response to my question, I asked the laboratory staff on my return visit to check their diagnostic records. The entry was found by Magda Mlengeya and read to me -- due to excessive bacterial contamination, the slides could not be examined. This finding seemed rather strange to me, since the smears (both thick and thin) had been allowed to dry naturally and were delivered immediately into the lab when our "tusk rescue" party returned to base. I asked how that could be. She had no answer, but said that it happened from time to time.

Then I recalled that during the 1998 visit that the laboratory did not have the means by which to ensure that slides were sterilized after use, although the lab did at that time have a sufficient supply of disinfectant. I also recalled that veterinarian at the base laboratory had written a report on the anthrax death of a young bull elephant six months before the 1998 kudu outbreak. This report went to TANAPA, the Tanzanian park administrative authority headquartered in Arusha, but was not made public and was not reflected in the country's annual report to the World Animal Organization (the OIE in Paris). Questions occur: Did the blood smear taken from the elephant in March 1998 indicate anthrax? If so, was this because the slides used that afternoon had previously been used in the kudu outbreak and were, unknown to the park lab staff, contaminated by the environmentally resistant Bacillus anthracis? Or is it possible that diagnoses of anthrax in Serengeti elephants are routinely kept confidential within the TANAPA group? If so, would it be because there is live elephant trade between Tanzania and zoological parks? Or could it be connected to concerns that tourism would be adversely affected by publicly available records confirming anthrax cases? Or could it be that recurring anthrax in elephants would call into question the ability of TANAPA to conserve the health of a protected park specie?

ORIGINAL REPORT

It is just after noon. While I have been at the Serengeti National Park's visitor center a call has come from a safari operator to the Park Rangers' offices reporting an elephant down. The rangers and staff at the park's relatively new veterinary unit have quickly mobilized for an investigation. Dr. Titus Mlengeya, Chief Vet Officer, asks "Do you want to go with the field team?"

Bouncing through the ruts of the park roads with lab assistant Juma Mgeri, one park ranger, driver George Gome and me on board, the LandRover seems as much propelled by crackling radio messages as by its engine. We climb towards the western hills and stop behind the Sopa Lodge, where hotel workers dressed in robes scurry from the staff quarters to the lodge entrances, and we are joined by a second ranger.

"There is some confusion," he explains as the others in our group disappear into the quarters building to sort out the directions. Within minutes we, along with the second ranger, climb back into the vehicle. As we pass the lodge's main entrance, George stops before the glassed-in, opulent lobby. "Do you want to take a look around?" The question seems to me rather incredulous; but for the others it is a legitimate courtesy. After all, an elephant down does not have the same novelty for them as for me. And I am their guest. "No, no. I want to find the elephant." George guns the motor and we bump down the hillside onto a road through open land.




After several radio exchanges we stop. "This should be it," says Morris, looking out over the plain. Not one of us has a pair of binoculars, but my camera has a zoom. Hitting the button, I hoist the camera through the open window and scan the distance. "There it is," I say with a strange-to-me voice laced with equal parts of excitement and dread. Vultures circle overhead. We head toward the elephant.


"Simba..." comes a voice from the back of the Rover. "Where?"
"There..."
The wind parts the tall grass and I see the mane, then the full head. The male lion has assumed the position -- head forward, haunches down -- that is usually indicative of a full tummy after a good meal.
About 30 metres beyond lies our elephant on its left side. The soft tissues of the trunk have begun to deteriorate. According to my companions, it is a 3-5 year-old male and has been dead for about 3 days.

Bloated organs protrude from a 30-inch gash in the abdomen.




Juma and one of the rangers don rubber aprons, gloves and masks; another ranger has only gloves for protection. George stands to one side, at guard, one rifle slung over his shoulder, the other in hand. I stand to the other side, the neck of my T-shirt pulled up over my nose.




Juma takes a knife and several glass slides from a post mortem kit. He makes an incision in the elephant's right ear, expresses blood onto the slides and applies the slide covers. These are laid out on the running board of the Rover to dry.
"We have to take the tusks." I say I know, although I have known for less than two hours that this is the protocol. Previously assuming that tusks are taken only by "poachers" who have killed animals for that very purpose, I have never thought about what happens to the tusks of an elephant that dies from natural causes. And if I had, I would have thought that the tusks are simply left to the vagaries of weather and time, like antlers of deer.



The first step is to spread 25 pounds of lime around and over the carcass to diminish the putridity. This helps only slightly. I find myself changing position as the wind shifts, though careful to stay out of what could be the direct line of fire between the rifles and an attacking animal. The tusk extraction turns into a long, grueling task and a race with an approaching storm. While professional poachers often have gas-powered saws that quickly and neatly dispatch the tusks, these men with me have only knives and small hatchets that fling bits of tissue into the afternoon sun.





Taking turns, Juma and the two rangers work for almost an hour before the roots of the tusks are sufficiently exposed to allow them to break out the ivory. When it is done, the face of the elephant has disappeared.
For most of this time I manage to keep a mental balance between fascination and repulsion. In the end it quickly tilts -- from a sense of willing captivation to a need to escape.


The storm breaks. Meanwhile, we have attracted another lion, this one a female about 50 feet away. I retreat to the Rover, followed close behind by the field team.

The last one in is George. He returns the rifles to the rangers and we drive off, passing the second lion, a female, which now approaches the carcass.

On the ride back to the vet unit headquarters there is for awhile a heavy silence between all of us, as if each of us has become uniquely contaminated, not just soiled, in the experience. Then, someone suggests playing a cassette. Music washes over us. Now, even the tusks that lie ceremoniously at the feet of my companions look almost presentable.


These tusks, a young animal's, are only about 28 inches long. They will be locked inside one of the two large steel shipping containers that sit between the vet unit and the ranger offices. The Tanzanian government, Dr. Mlengeya says, will not sell its stores of ivory, as Zimbabwe is now doing after an exemption negotiated with CITES.

As a pragmatic person, I have reconciled my conscience to the exemption. Zimbabwe, like many African nations, needs money. Its national wildlife veterinary department is decimated; its children need textbooks, paper and pencils. If Tanzania were to follow suit and use the proceeds of limited, controlled ivory sales for building its infrastructure, it could be argued that the benefit to the country and its peoples outweighs the dictum that any sale encourages more poaching. In the meanwhile, the stocks of ivory safeguarded by the Tanzanian parks authority increase as disease and natural predation cull the elephant population.