In the last month Mara Elephant Project has been receiving calls that elephants were inside fences in the Mbitin area of Kenya. MEP has needed to send the Karen Blixen Camp Ree Park Safari Robinson R44 helicopter to this area five times alone this past month in order to push these elephants out of the farmland.
In addition to this rapid respond, since 2015, MEP has needed to position a permanent ranger team in the Ol Donyo Erinka area to monitor our collared elephant, Caroline, and more recently her two new herd mates Olchoda and Limo to keep them out of farmland and thus out of danger.
Usually when MEP responds and the elephants are ushered out of fenced in farm areas they often leave behind massive damage to the fence. So, MEP sent in Gideon Nkoitoi, a MEP ranger, to repair the damage to the fences. Gideon has been a ranger for 2 years working primarily on the patrol team where he monitors elephant movements and responds to any incidents of HEC. Gideon is the perfect MEP ranger for the difficult job of fence repair. Before coming to MEP he worked as a tradesman repairing fences in the Pardamat area and learned from electric fence technicians directly who installed them on his uncle’s farm.
MEP believes that in order to save elephant lives the local community must be involved. We are proud to be working directly with farmers who have had human-elephant conflict in finding solutions for them to better their relations with the Mara wildlife.
