Uproar as Satao, Kenya’s and World’s biggest elephant killed by poachers

Daily Nation

Conservationists around the world were up in arms Saturday following reports that poachers have killed two iconic elephants in the last two weeks using poisoned arrows.

The latest was 45-year-old male elephant that was poached at an area called Mulka near Taveta town.

The Kenya Wildlife Service deputy spokesman Mr Paul Muya said the elephant was shot with a poisoned arrow and both tusks were missing.

“It was discovered on June 12 and tests indicated that it could have been killed four days earlier,” said Mr Muya.

On social media, animal lovers around the world raged after renowned conservationist Dr Paula Kahumbu announced that Satao, a 50 year old bull and arguably Kenya’s biggest elephant had been poached in Tsavo East national park.

Satao’s slaughter comes weeks after the slaughter of another legendary elephant inside Mt Kenya forests.

“Of all the elephants that have died in Kenya, these deaths are the hardest to bear. The grief in Kenya at the slaughter of our iconic elephants is translating into floods of tears, emotional poems, and outrage,” wrote Dr Kahumbu in the Guardian.

Mr Ian Waweru said: “Politics aside, we should be mad because Satao, our own elephant, the largest in the world was killed by poachers.”

Mr Muya said the towering elephant’s carcass was discovered on June 2 at Dakota near Mackinnon Road Township on the Mombasa-Nairobi highway.

It had also been shot with a poisoned arrow and tests indicated that it had been killed a day earlier, he added.

Animal lovers have raised an alarm due to the increasing poaching incidents in Africa with KWS figures showing that Kenya has so far lost 97 elephants this year.

But Mr Muya says the rate has not reached a crisis. “There is a slight decrease in poaching but it is still not good. Last year we lost 302 elephants compared to 384 elephants in 2012. We expect that this year the figure will be way below 200,” he said.

The KWS spokesman said some 600 rangers are set to graduate next month to boost the efforts of 975 active officers who are currently deployed to protect the animals.

“We will have at least 1,500 on the ground. Since August last year, we have 120 General Service Unit and Administration Police officers reinforcing the rangers’ efforts,” he said

He said the rangers would soon be equipped with night vision gadgets and that a decision of using drones to conduct surveillance on national parks would soon be made.

The use of drones by KWS is still at the experimental stage and has not been stopped as widely reported, Mr Muya said.