In Kenya, there have been problems with people and elephants sharing the same lands; however, recently The Nature Conservancy joined with the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and found a way to create an elephant corridor beneath a major highway and around long obstructed agricultural fences. In addition to the elephants gaining safe passage through their restored migration route, the corridor also reunited two separated populations. The importance of this being that the elephants could once again interact and diversify the gene pool.
Lewa Wildlife Conservancy had already been working with the Mount Kenya Trust when The Nature Conservancy joined the project to help “raise the final funding to complete the project,” according to Jonathan Moss, Lewa’s chief executive. The goal was to re-establish “the elephants’ historical route between the Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve and Mount Kenya National Park.”
In order to construct the corridor, it would have to follow the Marania River Valley which meant that “the route would have to cross the main Nanyuki-Meru Highway, but only two major private holdings: Marania Farm and Kisima Farm.” Both farms were in favor of the elephant corridor so the only obstacle left was whether or not the elephants would actually pass through a concrete culvert beneath a busy highway.
As the corridor neared completion, the partners on the project had planned a “variety of creative measures to coax elephants through the underpass.” Although, the elephants surprised everyone when it appeared they needed little prodding; they “began gathering in the area as if they sensed a grand opening was imminent.”
On New Year’s Day 2011, Dyer, Kisima Farm’s manager, drove to the underpass to deploy the strategic plan: he unloaded fresh elephant dung from the back of his pickup truck like a trail of bread crumbs. And the plan worked! That night, a group of three elephants led by a bull known as Tony made the first crossing through the underpass. And according to a press release by Mount Kenya Trust, within the first twelve days twelve elephants moved through the underpass.
Sam Lawson, who leads the Nature Conservancy’s projects in Kenya, was quoted as saying, “It was so heartwarming […] to know that the elephants had found the corridor and they were using it.”
Since Tony’s crossing, many more elephants have followed in his enormous tracks, but the corridor still hasn’t reached its full potential. There’s a second underpass needed beneath another smaller road, the corridor fencing must be maintained, and security must be increased to fend off poachers.
Nevertheless, “East Africa’s first elephant underpass and the successful navigation of the new corridor represent tremendous progress toward people and elephants co-existing peacefully in northern Kenya.”
*All information and quotes from The Nature Conservancy
