Zimbabwe: Release orphaned elephants who have been fostered | panorama

Seven orphaned and nursing elephants have been released back into the wild in Zimbabwe. The snakes were brought from their care station near the capital, Harare, to the Banda Masui Nature Reserve, 1,100 kilometers away, not far from the famous Victoria Falls in the west of the country by crane, lifting platform and heavy transport. This was announced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Zimbabwean animal welfare organization Wild is Life.

The elephants – Moyo, Unity, Sally, Sienna, Bumi, Coco and Kururakura – have been rescued from life-threatening situations as infants or small animals and are cared for at the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery run by the two organisations. Roxy Dankuerts, founder of the Elephant Orphanage, said some elephant mothers have been killed by poachers, while others have died from injuries or from dehydration.

The baby elephants were cared for around the clock for months and fed with special milk until they were released back into the wild. Dankowerts explained that “baby elephants are completely dependent on milk until they are two years old and cannot live on their own.”

Monitoring continues

The animals arrived safely on Thursday at the 85,000-hectare sanctuary, where 11 other recovered elephants are already living. These should help the newcomers settle into their new surroundings. Dankwerts said the process could take anywhere from several months to a few years. Until then, the keepers took care of the animals and watched them daily.

Some old pachyderms have already been successfully released and are roaming through the unfenced reserve and also through neighboring reserves in neighboring Botswana and Mozambique. The Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery says it has rescued 46 orphaned elephants since 2014.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies African savannah elephants, whose numbers have declined by at least 60 percent in the past 50 years, as “endangered.” About 415,000 animals still live on the continent, mainly in southern Africa.

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