As part of my visit to Sheldricks in November I had the
pleasure of visiting their reintroduction camp at Tsavo. Here the older
elephants that have become independent and don’t need 24/7 personal supervision
are reintroduced into the wild. On daily walks into the park these orphans are
given the opportunity to mix with the wild elephants. Every night at 5 pm they
come back to camp and are fed a bottle of milk before retiring to their
compound for safety at night. The male and female orphans are kept separate
since they tend to be naughty. After some time the older elephants will go off
and join a wild herd and are thus reintroduced into the wild where they belong.
To date over 200 elephants have been released. Yet as is their nature they
remember where they were raised and often when they are injured or sick they
return for treatment. Amazingly enough on many occasions they will bring wild
elephants to the reintroduction centre to be healed. These are amazing
creatures with human like qualities fortunately devoid of bad habits which
define us as humans.
