Elephants

November 14, 2014

The elephants in Africa are amazing. Most are HUGE and there are so many of them. I believe that we saw elephants every day. They were in the woods, in grasslands, at the river, crossing the road, drinking and playing at watering holes, in towns and national parks. We saw bachelor herds, mom and babies, and mixed groups. Always there were elephants.

We were in Africa at the end of the dry season. By the end of November the rains will come and the land will be transformed, but during our visit every blade of grass was yellow, the red earth was parched and dusty, and most of the trees had not a single leaf. It was astonishing that the thousands of animals we saw all looked like they were thriving in what appeared to be a wasteland.

Most grazers eat either grass or leaves. Elephants though are unique because they can feed on grass,

leaves, bark, branches and even roots. That means a herd of elephants can pretty much destroy an area and strip it of all its plant material in a very short time. This is not so great for the other wildlife, and it’s becoming a problem in villages and towns. We saw areas where there was just bare dirt, hardly any grass, and many trees were damaged because the bark had been stripped off. Sometimes they even knock the trees over and eat the roots.

I had thought that elephants were highly endangered due to the ivory trade and that poachers were killing all the elephants in Africa, but that is only true in certain parts of Africa. In Southern Africa there is an overabundance of elephants. We saw elephants everywhere we went. Chobe National Park in Botswana is 4,500 square miles, and there are more than 50,000 elephants living there.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE elephants and nothing tickled me more than seeing elephants every few minutes. It is thrilling to see 75 elephants running out of the woods, trumpeting, dust flying everywhere on their way to the water hole. We saw all sizes and sexes throughout our trip. We even got to observe a baby that was so small it was still wobbly and mom had to stop and wrap her trunk around it’s whole body to life it up out of a rut.

On the day we visited Victoria Falls, we drove to the edge of town to see one of the largest Baobab trees. As we headed back into town, a herd of elephants crossed right in front of us. There was a man on a bicycle on the other side of the elephants and he just stopped to let them pass.

Bob and I went on an elephant ride near Victoria Falls. We rode Mbanje, the 27 year-old male, and the largest of the four. As we headed out, I spotted a group of wild elephants in the distance and hoped that ours wouldn’t take off to join them. It was very exciting to be on top of an elephant and quite a comfortable ride. At the end, we got to feed him and sit on his knee for a bit. Mbanje’s skin was WAY more stiff and rough than I had expected, but he was a real sweetie.

Having too many elephants in an area is quite a serious and complex issue. Wildlife management has tried contraception, but that made the elephants aggressive. They tried shooting a few, but that made the rest of the herd aggressive. They can’t just relocate some, they need to move the whole the herd, and that is a dangerous and extremely costly endeavor. I hope they can find an answer is to this complicated problem and that somehow the elephant population can be redistributed throughout Africa. They are spectacular and everyone should get enjoy them.