At least 50 elephants were sedated, put to sleep, tied up and hoisted onto tractor-trailers to be transported. This is not the beginning of a dramatic rap, but that of the Kenyan government's initiative to try to limit human-wildlife conflicts in the Mwea reserve, north of Nairobi, where rice is cultivated as in China and starvation is increasing as in Kenya.
The Kenya Wildlife Service has decided to relocate the pachyderms in that area to Aberdare Park and its forest, where they are easier to control and should have enough to eat so as not to encroach on cultivated fields and farms.
The government, while admitting the critical nature of the situation, hailed the event as a great conservation initiative. The KWS writes on its X profile: ‘We have officially started a major elephant translocation operation, moving about 50 elephants from the Mwea National Reserve to Aberdare National Park. This effort underlines the KWS's commitment to improving human-wildlife coexistence and addressing environmental degradation within the Mwea National Reserve.’
The KWS also confirms that it has developed an ‘elephant action plan’ that will run until 2032, ‘which aims to ensure the sustainability of elephant populations, mitigate human-elephant conflicts, restore degraded habitats and improve the economic benefits of elephants for local communities’.
According to the wildlife tourism board, increasing elephant numbers in Aberdare Park will boost ecotourism and support sustainable development.
Also present at the harnessing of the bouncing elephants was the Minister of Tourism, Rebecca Miano, who pointed out that Kenya's growing human population is encroaching on the remaining elephant lands, exacerbating conflicts.
We await the awakening of the fifty specimens in Aberdare. Hoping that the sedatives have not marred their intelligence and nicked their proverbial memory, but only slightly affected their photographic one.

(photo courtesy X)