Cave elephant resurfaces with new survival tactics

By Harold Ayodo

The lure of salt draws a unique group of elephants deep into the belly of Mt Elgon.

For thousands of years the cave elephant has been trekking to Kitum cave and smaller caverns at the base of the mountain to mine salt.

One generation teaches the next the secrets of the cave, despite the awful memory of poachers who attacked their ancestors at the mouth of this magnificent place and source of a vital nutrient in the 1980s and 1990s. The horrific attacks kept them away from the caves and saw their numbers decline from more than a 1,000 to just over 100.

After concerted conservation efforts the situation has taken turn for the better with the elephants having increased from 220 in 2002 to slightly over 300 this year.

Under the cover of night, oblivious of a petition by Tanzania and Zambia for the lifting of the ivory trade ban that could threaten them once more, the elephants journey to the cave to cure their salt cravings.

As Kenya lobby’s countries across the world to support an all-out ban on ivory trade to protect the animal, the good news from Mt Elgon should spur them on.

Critical moment

At this critical moment for their survival when the animal population is dwindling elsewhere, the rare, salt licking, cave elephant of Mt Elgon has stepped back from the brink of extinction to offer new hope.

Successful efforts to curb poaching and behaviour change is behind the resurgence of the elephant. The unique elephant has become more aggressive to fight off poachers. Researchers say their new defence mechanisms scare would be poachers that once threatened them to near extinction and make it harder for them to capture the animal.

The transboundary African elephants (Loxodonta africana) use their tusks to gouge walls of the caverns for sodium chloride unaware that the push by Tanzania and Zambia for a new trading window to sell their ivory stockpile, supposedly to raise funds for conservation, could once again threaten their survival.

Tanzania wants to sell 89,848kg and Zambia 21,692kg and raw hides.

The two countries recently petitioned the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) to allow them to trade their tusk stockpiles.

At Mt Elgon National Park poaching is on the decline even as the vice has spreads in other parts of the country in the last three years.

Poached countrywide

For instance, 200 elephants were poached countrywide last year up from 145 in 2008 and 47 last year.

A poaching ban imposed in 1989 after the Government set ablaze 12 tonnes of ivory saw the elephant population ruse from 16,000 in 1989 to 35,000 this year.

The park senior warden Dickson Ritan largely attributes the growth to anti-poaching measures. "We lost only three elephants in the past eight years – two to poisoned arrows and one to poaching," Ritan says.

He says the elephants were a target of poachers from neighbouring Uganda. "The poachers would follow them to the caves at night," Ritan says. He says containing the poachers succeeded because of co-operation with the Uganda government. "We increased patrols on our side and Uganda did the same from their end. This limited movements of the attackers," Ritan says.

The elephants were an easy target at the gigantic caves at the foot of the mountain where they troop after sunset to lick salt to replenish nutrients in their body.

The elephants move in a convoy penetrating the dark corridors that their ancestors used for generations to travel up to 160m deep into the main Kitum cave.

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) senior researchers Frederick Lala says elephants have an acute sense of smell. They use their trunks to smell their way along the subterranean route.

Birth defects

Lala and Research Scientist Israel Makau say the elephant, like other creatures in hot climates, need salt in their diet to help them retain water. Makau says lack of salt causes birth defects, organ failure, decay, diseases, premature aging and early deaths.

But the elephants do not get enough salt from their diet making them mine from the walls of Kitum cave deep inside Mt Elgon.

Unlike their cousins living in the plains where vegetation is rich in salt, the rainforest plants lack the nutriet as it is washed away by frequent rain.

"The wet climate means plenty of food but constant rain washes away salt from the surrounding vegetation," Makau says.

Since their tongue is not long enough to lick the salt from the cave walls, the elephants scrape it off with their tusks.

"They pick up the rock and dirt with their trunks and put it in their mouth before grind it down with their huge molars and swallowing," Makau says.

Gouging of salts has left the elephants with shorter tusks compared to others. Salts from rocks in the caves not only benefit the jumbos as other animals including buffalos, bushbucks, rock hyrax, leopards, hyenas and primates rely on the leftovers on the floor.

Lala says the geophagy — eating dirt— by the elephants may have formed the caves that are between 8000 to 12,000 years old.

Researchers say that the move by Tanzania and Zambia to allow trade on ivory could precipitate a flare up in poaching.