Visit to South Africa

I had the privilege of visiting another elephant researcher in South Africa recently and see her work for myself. Michelle Henley of Save The Elephants, South Africa (soon to be Elephants Alive) was host to myself and our Trustee Brian Courtenay. Michelle and I have known each other for a while, having met at an elephant conference a few years back and share a mutual interest in male elephants, whenever I was visiting friends near Hoedspruit we would try and meet up for coffee and discuss our work and possible collaboration. This was the first time I had visited her research and see for myself what she gets up to and we hope it will be the start of much comparison work between her boys and ours.
It was a whistle stop tour of parts of her study area, the APNR (Association of Private Nature Reserves), where we were hosted by wonderful people and got to witness the rigorous training of an anti-poaching team. The early morning drill was very impressive but I was distracted by a moth fluttering around the feet of the Staff-Sergeant and did all I could to restrain myself from grapping it whilst the drill was in full swing. As soon as the stomping had stopped I dived in and grabbed it – not sure all the burly men were impressed!!

As luck would have it a very distinctive collared female elephant, Dini, was in the area whose collar had stopped functioning. Michelle was very relieved that she was OK and can now make plans to remove it. Our host, Peter Anderson, new this elephant well having been charged by her in the past, she is now a very relaxed elephant and we were able to enjoy the company of her and a herd of 70+ as they feed and drank along the drying riverbed in the dwindling light. We were off to fly for some other collared elephant at the time, but when an opportunity comes to spend time amongst a wonderfully relaxed herd who have to grab it with both arms, and so the helicopter trip was postponed until the morning and what a treat that was getting to see this area from the sky – quite stunning.
We did not pick up any of the collared males, but on our way to Michelle’s camp we were able to pick up one of her males when nearing his last satellite download. A magnificent bull that calmly drank and mud bathed as we watched.
It was a busy few days of meetings and discussion and worth every second of travel and pound of expense. I look forward to working together with Michelle in the future and unravelling the lives of male elephants.