At Kenyan orphanage, baby elephants find a new life and love
NAIROBI, Kenya — Luggard, a lively three-year-old, limps behind the rest of his ragtag troupe of orphan elephants, halting to graze or rub against a tree.
When he was just five months old, Luggard was found struggling to keep up with his herd in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park.
He had been shot twice.
One bullet pierced his left front foot, and another shattered his right, hind femur just above the knee joint.
The calf was discovered “too late for successful surgery,” said Edwin Lusichi, 42, head keeper at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT) elephant nursery in Nairobi National Park, Luggard’s new home.
With the rest of the gang of 20 elephant babies in this unusual orphanage, Luggard comes charging with great enthusiasm, though hobbling heavily on his deformed leg, out of the bush for a 9:00 am feeding.
The calves greedily slurp from oversized “baby bottles”, rumbling with contentment and trumpeting excitedly as they ingest the special mix of human baby formula, water and vitamins.
Each calf at the nursery has a tragic story: Orphaned by poachers, drought, or in conflict with humans encroaching ever further into the few wild places left.
“We rescue them from just a few days old,” SWT administrator Kirsty Smith said.
The youngest elephant in the center’s care is Larro, 10 months.
She was found lost and alone in the Maasai Mara game reserve, likely after her family clashed with humans.
“Sometimes the elephants get into the communities, farms and homes. People fight them, chase them away, and in the process of the fight they (the babies) get separated from their families,” Lusichi explained.
Without its mother, an elephant calf will die.
Elephants are weaned between the ages of five and 10, when they enter adolescence. Adulthood starts around the age of 18 and, left undisturbed, elephants can live to be 70.
But poaching claims many prematurely.
About 20,000 African elephants per year — 55 per day — are killed, mainly for their tusks, according to the WWF.
“You’re killing a whole elephant just to have the tusks! For what — just to have an ornament?” asks an exasperated Lusichi.
He points to Enkesha, a tiny twoyear-old.
“You see the trunk? She was found trapped in a snare” which all but severed the appendage elephants use to breathe, eat, drink water, and communicate.
Enkesha was rescued, stitched up, and after a long rehabilitation, now uses her badly-scarred trunk almost as normal, ripping up grass to eat and sucking up water.
In 42 years, the trust has rehabilitated more than 230 orphan elephants. Over 120 have been returned to the wild and have given birth to 30 known calves, said Smith.