CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — When it comes to the niche market of elephant translocation, Dr. Amir Khalil and his team may be the best.
The Egyptian veterinarian’s resume may include the world’s most famous elephant relocation. In 2020, Khalil’s team rescued Kaavan, an Asian elephant, from years of loneliness in a Pakistani zoo and flew him to a better life with other elephants at a sanctuary in Cambodia.
Kaavan was dubbed the “loneliest elephant in the world” at the time and the project was a great success. But he was not the only one in need of help.
Next up was the last captive elephant in South Africa.
Charley, a four-ton elderly African elephant, had outlived his peers at a zoo in the capital, Pretoria, where he had lived for more than 20 years. Elephants are sensitive animals, wildlife experts say, and Charley had shown signs of being deeply unhappy in his enclosure since his mate, Landa, died in 2020.
Zoo officials decided he should be retired and moved to a location more suited to a large, old breed of elephant: a large private game reserve about 200 kilometers away, where there was a chance he could make new elephant friends.
How do we get him there? Khalil, an animal rescue specialist with the Four Paws wildlife welfare organization, was an obvious choice for this latest mammoth job.
If ever there was an elephant who deserved to enjoy his old age, it was Charley.
He was captured as a young calf in western Zimbabwe in the 1980s and taken from his herd. He spent 16 years in a South African circus and 23 years as a star attraction at the National Zoological Garden in Pretoria. He is now believed to be 42 years old and has spent 40 of those years in captivity.
“I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people and children witnessed and enjoyed Charley,” Khalil said. “I think it’s time for him to enjoy life and live as an elephant.”
The mechanics of moving an elephant to a new life are complex. Khalil doesn’t shoot or tranquilize elephants, mainly because it’s not good for such a large animal. Plus, a tranquilized four-ton elephant is hardly easier to move.
And so began the process of training a sometimes grumpy old elephant to voluntarily step into a large metal shipping container that would be loaded onto a truck. Khalil and fellow veterinarians Dr. Marina Ivanova and Dr. Frank Göritz — who were also part of the Kaavan relocation team — first began communicating with Charley two years ago.
This was to assess how ready he was to move and, crucially, to earn his trust. The interaction was carefully controlled, but involved teaching Charley to respond to calls to walk to a “training wall” that had holes in it so the team could offer him a food reward. In Charley’s case, pumpkin, papaya and beetroot are his favorites.
The same process was eventually used to coax Charley into the shipping container. It was thought that it would take months and months for Charley to happily step into the container when it was introduced, but he was ready in less than two weeks of crate training last month.
“He was curious and thought, what is this new toy?” Ivanova said.
After an hours-long car ride in the back of a truck, Charley was introduced to his new home in the Shambala Private Game Reserve in late August.
He will be kept in a separate area from the main park for a few weeks to allow him to settle in, the team said, given the huge change for an old elephant. The park has wild elephant herds that Charley could join.
Khalil said it is still very rare for captive elephants to be reintroduced to a wild environment and praised officials at Pretoria Zoo and the South African Department of Environment for allowing the project to proceed. “It is a great message from South Africa that even an old elephant deserves a new chance,” he said.
Khalil’s team has another elephant action planned in Pakistan in October.
Elephants are highly intelligent, highly social animals, Khalil said, and while Charley was unhappy, he could also be mischievous and playful and occasionally show joy. Khalil compared Charley’s last few unsatisfying years at the zoo without companionship to someone watching the same movie alone every day.
At Shambala, Charley will be free to take a mud bath, roam the bush and be a wild elephant for the first time in four decades, with thousands of acres to explore. Some of his early memories as a calf before he was captured may still be there. It’s true, the vets said, that elephants have incredible memories.
Charley is already making contact with other elephants in the park from his enclosure, Ivanova said. Elephants have deep rumbling sounds that can be heard 3 miles (5 kilometers) away and that they use to communicate.
“I hear him rumbling,” Ivanova said excitedly. “We’re helping him turn back into a wild elephant.”
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AP Africa News: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
