Kanjoro's Graduation

A couple of months ago I decided to foster two elephant orphans in Kenya, Kanjoro and Quanza. Recently Kanjoro has graduated to the next stage in his rehabilitation into the wild by moving to Ithumba. Ithumba is the next step in the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's rehabilitation program, where elephants gain exposure to the wild herds in Tsavo National Park.

This is an important step in the reintegration, as baby elephants learn bush etiquette from the matriarch and older females in the herd, or in the case of bulls like Kanjoro, from older bulls in the bachelor herds. Ithumba gives the orphans a chance to interact with all of the ex-orphans and their wild friends, who frequently turn up when new orphans arrive at Ithumba, and this interaction provides the orphans with their bush etiquette training. It is also important that they make friends within the wild herds, as elephants are very social creatures.

While this is a great step in the right direction, it will still be several years before Kanjoro is no longer dependent on his keepers and his milk feedings. Elephants mature at the same rate as humans, so at almost three years old he is much older than the other nursery orphans but very much still a baby. But he is reaching that age where he was beginning to test his strength against other bulls, and so he needed to be moved to Ithumba to be with other orphans closer to his own size.

There is an update on Kanjoro's relocation on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's website, here  Kanjoro's Relocation. Apparently Kanjoro is a nervous traveler and tried to make a break for it when he first arrived at Ithumba, before stopping and returning to the familiar keepers. He will settle in soon, as moving to Ithumba always reunites the orphans with all of their old friends who made the move before them, and an elephant's memory is longer than ours and they can remember other elephants they haven't seen for years or even decades. And then they tend to greet each other with loud rumblings and trunk kisses.

I am happy that Kanjoro is doing so well and was able to move on to this next stage of his life without mishap. Soon he will begin testing his strength against the other bulls at Ithumba that are similar in size to him, and within a couple of years he should be able to fully integrate back into the wild.

Kanjoro on the moving truck with Kilabasi

Kanjoro on the truck

Kanjoro running off the truck and heading to the keepers with his milk

Settling in

The Poaching Wars

As part of my preparation to go to Africa, I have been trying to keep up to date with wildlife news, especially regarding the elephants, and how they have been faring in the poaching wars. So far it's not too good.

I don't think the poaching problem in Africa has been portrayed as a real problem to the general public. The majority of poaching is done to fuel the growing demand in the East, especially China, where a rising middle class uses ivory trinkets as a status symbol. But it's been shown that the majority of Chinese people- one paper said about 70%- don't have any idea that elephants have to die to remove the tusks. They think the tusks simply fall off the elephants as part of a natural process and that they can be collected off the ground. How can we decrease demand from the major source of increased poaching when the majority of the people creating the demand are so uneducated about ivory?

It is believed that 25,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2011. The number is expected to be even higher for 2012. Already in 2013, less than one month in, 12 elephants have already been killed in Kenya in one of the worst single poaching incidents in that country. One of those 12 elephants killed was a two month old baby, who didn't even have any ivory to poach. At this rate, so conservationists have claimed that elephants may be extinct from the wild within 20 years.

The elephant has always been a majestic symbol linked to Africa. It's hard to think of an Africa without elephants. They aren't even just linked to Africa alone anymore, they are part of the human culture. When teaching kids the alphabet, it's always "e is for elephant". We decorate nurseries with cute blue and pink elephant prints. At this rate, we are going to be teaching our kids to love an animal that is only going to be found in a small number of zoos, where their  natural majesty and beauty can't be appreciated the way it could be in the wild.

But it's more than just the fact that human greed is trying to extinguish yet another species. This is a species that is supposed to have the lifespan as a human, with the same, if not better, capacities for memory and emotion. Baby elephants orphaned by poaching incidents will stand guard over their fallen families until rescued- if they are lucky enough to be found- where they then usually sink into a deep depression and refuse to eat and lose the will to live. One of the greatest things about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Orphanage is that it allows these grieving elephants to be comforted by others in the same position as them, and usually it is not until these new orphans are comforted by their fellow orphan survivors that they begin to turn the corner. It is nothing short of tragic and despicable that entire families are ripped apart for mere trinkets.

The poaching problem isn't going to get any better until there is a rise in public awareness and there is a shift that makes elephant lives worth more than ivory chopsticks. And I don't want to give the wrong impression here, either- rhinos are dying at alarming rates the same as elephants. I don't know as much about their crisis other than they are also facing extinction if the poaching doesn't stop. One new technique with rhinos is to capture them and saw off their horns before the poachers can shoot them and do it themselves. Of course, while this saves the rhinos life from poaching, it leaves them defenseless against other rhinos and other predators. There is no good answer for this other than to crack down on poaching.

It is upsetting that humans value money more than other life. But until more people are aware of how bad the situation is, nothing is going to change. In the words of Dr. Seuss, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

one of the orphans with one of the keepers at the DSWT orphanage

some of the elephant orphans at the DSWT Orphanage

Wildlife Wine Tasting Fundraiser

The Wildlife Wine Tasting Fundraiser was last Thursday, and overall I'm pretty happy with how it went! Everyone had a great time, and while wine costs kept us from raising as much as we would have liked, at least we weren't in the red! We wouldn't have been able to pull this off without all of the support from local Stillwater business, and thank you to everyone who came out to support us!

I think organizing this fundraiser was a good learning experience, and there are a lot of things I would do differently next time around to try and make other fundraisers more successful. There is a lot more that goes into planning an event like this than I originally thought, and a lot of details in the last minute organizing and finalizing. I am considering doing a similar event again in the spring, but as a beer tasting instead of a wine tasting. I think that may appeal to more people, and keep overhead costs down. I'll have to see how this semester goes, but as always I'll keep this blog updated with my fundraising attempts!

Wine bottles ready for the wine pool

Our raffles, silent auctions and wine pool

Mini cupcakes provided by Cake Crazy LLC. Delicious!

Truffles from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Wine Tasting!

Raffle winners!

Raffle winners!

Drawing raffle winners

Raffle Winners!

Some of the damages from the night

Back Again

It's been a while since my last blog post, which isn't surprising because I always disappear for a while around finals, and then with break it's always crazy. But I can't believe I'm starting my second semester of my second year of veterinary school... it feels like time has been flying by. It definitely feels like it's going by faster than my undergrad, which felt faster than high school. Each successive 4 year block of school feels shorter than the last.

This semester is going to be interesting. I'm already lost in my diagnostic imaging class. I'm not too surprised about this, and I was expecting it. It will help make this semester interesting though. I think I'm going to enjoy my clinical neurology elective and virology class, although I know that will be extremely time consuming for me. If you're wondering which classes I get to take this semester, I have Epidemiology, Food Safety and Public Health, Virology, Pharmacology (again), Anesthesiology, Diagnostic Imaging, Hemolymphatic/Oncology System, Clinical Neurology, Lab Animal Medicine, and Zoonotic Diseases. That's a lot. I'm just hoping I can learn some lizard anatomy and physiology in my lab animal course.

I've also been continuing to work hard on my fundraising efforts. My next fundraiser, a Wildlife Wine Taster, is coming up this Thursday! I've had some early ticket sales, and I'm hoping a lot of people come out to help support us. We've had a lot of support from local businesses in the Stillwater area, and they have really helped me with their contributions. We'll have chocolates from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, baguettes from Panera, and cupcakes from Cake Crazy LLC to go along with our wine tasting. We've also had donations from The Links at Stillwater, The Funnies Comedy Club, Tan and Tone, The Uniform Stop, Summit Co, Downtown Marketplace, Rhinestone Cowgirl, Murphy's Department Store, Reese Chiropractic, DuLaney's Retail Liquer Store, Brown's Bottle Shop, Stillwater Wine and Spirits Warehouse, and JR Liqueur for both raffle baskets and a wine pool. I was so surprised by the outpouring of support from the Stillwater community for our fundraiser, and I am hoping that all of these donations will really help the wine tasting be a success.

I have also paid the deposit for the Africa program, so I will officially be going this summer! I am so excited to learn about wildlife medicine, and I am hoping I can get the chance to work with the elephants and make a difference in the conservation effort. I've been reading a book called "The Elephant Whisperer", and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in conservation in general or elephants in particular. I am also considering continuing my bake sales, since they were so successful, and donating the profits to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. As soon as I can figure out if I am actually allowed to do this on campus I'll be starting that back up.

I can already tell it's going to be a busy busy year, but it always is in vet school! At this point, I don't think I would know what to do with my extra time if I didn't have any extra projects going on!