Dear STE Friends, Colleagues and Supporters
We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a belated Happy New Year and to apologise for having not updated our blog for several months now. We promise to have constant blogs and updates.
2009 was not a very good year for the elephants in general. We experienced the worst drought of our times in two of our project areas, Samburu, and Mali. Kenya’s elephants were suffering twofold. The country was being ravaged by drought, and at the same time poaching for ivory was (and still is) increasing. A terrible combination! Young, old and weak elephants died from lack of food, and the big strong bulls for their tusks. Sadly, we lost a few of our collared elephants to the drought and to poaching. In Mali, the drought was so severe we had to build a concrete tank with donations received from our kind donors. Of course this would not have been possible without the support from, you our donors and friends. We continue to work harder than ever to monitor the situation but this was expensive. Food and fuel costs have soared, at a time when funds are harder to come by.
On a happier tone, our interns’ programme is going on very well and we have had some really great interns visit our research camp in Samburu. We will be posting their blogs here for you to see what they are doing up there. We hope you will enjoy reading them. Please visit our website for further information - www.savetheelephants.org
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our donors, friends, and supporters without whom our work would not be possible. We would especially like to thank the following donors who have responded to our appeals through our Wildlife Direct page: Linda M, Charles A, Diane K, Joyce N, Eric B, S V, Betsy K.
Please click on the following link to read a full report on the Mali Drought of 2009. http://bit.ly/aU13zk
It is our endeavor to post constant blogs and we are sorry that our first blog will be to report the devastating floods that hit Samburu on 4th March, 2010. Our Save the Elephants research camp was totally damaged and we are still trying to assess how much invaluable research data has been lost. Equipment, structures, etc were not spared. Luckily, there was no loss of human life reported. Please read the next blogs for more information. We shall be posting new updates and pictures as we continue to receive them from the field.
