500 elephants find new home in massive African relocation

LIWONDE NATIONAL PARK, Malawi — Half a dozen African elephants lay strewn on a riverside plain in Malawi, immobilized by darts fired from a helicopter in a massive project to move 500 elephants, by truck and crane, to a sanctuary for the threatened species.

As development squeezes Africa’s wildlife areas, this kind of man-made animal migration is increasingly seen as a conservation strategy in Malawi, one of the continent’s most densely populated countries, and beyond.

Conservationists flipped the prostrate elephants’ large ears over their eyes to block out light, and propped open the tips of their trunks with twigs to ensure unimpeded breathing. Then the multi-ton elephants, hanging upside down from ankle straps, were loaded by crane onto trucks for a road trip of about 185 miles to a safer, more spacious area.

African elephants are in particular peril from human encroachment, while poachers have slaughtered them in the tens of thousands to meet demand for ivory, mostly in Asia.

An elephant is lifted by a crane in an upside down position in Lilongwe, Malawi, in the first step of an assisted migration of 500 of the threatened species. An elephant is lifted by a crane in an upside down position in Lilongwe, Malawi, in the first step of an assisted migration of 500 of the threatened species. Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, Associated Press Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 500 elephants find new home in massive African relocation 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The Malawi elephant project differs from other wildlife relocations because of its large scale.

“This is very much the way that we’ll have to manage things in the future,” said Craig Reid, manager of Malawi’s Liwonde National Park, which is run by African Parks, a nonprofit group based in Johannesburg. Reid described Liwonde as “an ecological island in a sea of humanity.”

African Parks is relocating hundreds of what it calls “surplus” elephants from Liwonde and Majete, another park, to Nkhotakota, a third reserve where poachers have virtually wiped out the elephant population.

African Parks, which manages all three Malawian reserves, is moving the 500 elephants this month and next, and again next year when vehicles can maneuver on the rugged terrain during southern Africa’s dry winter.

African Parks hopes elephants in Malawi can eventually serve as a reservoir to restore other African elephant populations. One estimate says Africa has fewer than 500,000 elephants, down from several million a century ago.

A South Africa-based company, Conservation Solutions, is contributing to the Malawi relocation project. Its leader, Kester Vickery, said the key to successful relocations of what he called a “higher-thinking kind of animal” is to keep tightly knit elephant families together.

Unlike many other species, Vickery said, the first thing that a darted mother elephant does on recovering is look for her calf.