Meet Roman

Well, I’m back now in Lilongwe for a couple of weeks (was supposed to be a couple of days) because my car needs fixing…again. But at least it gives me a good chance to give a little Kasungu / Release update.

A few weeks ago my troop encountered a neighboring wild troop of baboons. Actually they came across each other three times in one day. It was all very exciting and stressful. But at the end of the third encountered, we saw a male from the other troop run over to ours, very much in the style of Red Rover, Red Rover. This new guy seemed to follow my baboons for the rest of the day without incident, so we decided just to watch and see what would happen. It is usual for sub-adult and adult males to leave their natal troops and immigrate into new ones. This helps, of course, with preserving the species’ genetic diversity. However, unless you do long-term field work, it’s not a usual occurrence to see. It’s one of the few typical baboon things that I hadn’t yet been privy to witness! So needless to say, I was very excited by the whole thing. 

Over the next few days, we all watched tentatively to see how this new male would mesh with the group. And thankfully, everything seemed to go smoothly. There were a few bouts of chasing between him and my own resident sub-adult male and adult male, but no real aggression or fighting or injuries. Watching the whole immigration process was very interesting. The new guy spent a few days towards the outskirts of the troop, quietly following along. After a few days, my own troop began following him, taking his lead because he clearly knows the area and the bush better than they do. My adult male, John, didn’t seem to care at all, and seemed happy to hand the reigns over to someone more capable. The rest of the troop also didn’t seem to mind him joining. Bruiser, my sub-adult, who had been the leader thus far, seemed a bit peeved, but still followed the new guy along with the rest of the troop. Hopefully Bruiser continues to stick around and doesn’t get itchy fit like sub-adult males tend to and go off to find another troop, something which is definitely likely. But I like Bruiser and he is a key member of my small troop so I was happy to see that he and the new guy were getting along.

Roman

 

Once it was clear that this new male was going to stay with us, I decided to name him Roman. I always try and incorporate my rather odd undergrad Classics major into my primatological life, and the best way is through awesome names. In the past I’ve named some baboons Aeneas, Agamemnon, Athena, etc. So this one is called Roman. It’s also a slight pun, because he’s a roamin’ male, get it? Roman is a sub-adult, soon to be an adult. He’s slightly larger than Bruiser and slightly smaller than John, but he is big and muscular and healthy. He’s got a skinny dark face with kind eyes and long ginger-y hair. He’s very orange compared to my grey-er baboons. 

Roman (back) is much more orange than Bruiser (front)

I’m excited to see how Roman continues to integrate into the troop and in turn how the troop responds to him. I’m also excited that this new bush-wise male will increase the bush-savviness of my own release troop!

And here are some more recent photos for you to enjoy!

A Rough Day

This past week was…. Intense. Last week, as we were coming back from our weekly shopping trip to town, we got a call from wildlife vet Dr. Amanda Salb. (By the way, the “we” I usually refer to is me and Daniel Grove. Dan is the camp manager of the research camp here in Kasungu. He’s an Englishman that used to work in South Africa at the Vervet Monkey Foundation (VMF), only a couple hours from CARE. We actually have a number of friends in common that we’ve met along our various travels and journeys. He is in charge of my budget, and shopping for food and supplies, organizing scouts for me, and acts as my field assistant when I need him. Basically, he’s the only other person I live with way out here.)

Anyways, Amanda works for WERU, the Wildlife Emergency Response Unit, the only wildlife veterinary service available in the whole of Malawi. She basically redefines “badass”. For example, she worked with the Centre and the carnivore research team to dart and collar urban hyenas in Lilongwe a few months ago to be translocated. She had one in the back of her Land Rover on the way to the Centre when it woke up slightly from its sedation. She basically had the hyena in a headlock as it bit her arm, as her boyfriend/colleague pulled the car up onto the curb and jumped in the back with more sedation. Pretty badass. She also helped with darting our male baboon, Big Foot, for the release.

So, we got a call from Amanda that she was on her way to Kasungu. There was an elephant that was shot through the ear and into her shoulder a few weeks ago by a poacher. This happened not too far from the lodge and the camp where I live. We all know about the problem of poaching and we’ve all seen pictures or news articles or blurbs on Facebook about the dwindling elephant and rhino populations, but to have it be a reality in my backyard was a new thing.

They had been following this elephant almost every day since then to track her progress. At times she seemed fine, slightly limping, but then gradually got worse, becoming more and more lame. I’d often come across her on or near the road up to my release site. Amanda had come out a couple of times to assess her situation, but there was ultimately nothing she could do, especially without an x-ray of the damage to her shoulder.

The week before blocking my route home from the field. You can see her right front leg limping a bit.

Unfortunately, on Saturday, the ellie, named Kalimba, which is a Chichewa word for strength or bravery or something similar, couldn’t get up. We joined Amanda at the ellie while she administered antibiotics and fluids. We even tried to push her up onto her feet, or at least onto her chest so she wasn’t just lying on her side on the ground. I was literally kneeling in a pile of elephant poop while shoving with all my might to try and get her to budge. Unfortunately, elephants are heavy and she refused to get up. We all soon realized that she was too far-gone and there was nothing that we could do for her. We left her for the night, with a couple of scouts to keep the hyenas away, knowing that she would probably die soon.

And she did. We arrived early the next morning to find that she had died sometime around 4:30 in the morning. Amanda performed a localized necropsy on her leg and shoulder to assess the damage and what had caused her to decline so quickly and ultimately die. It turned out that she was shot in the shoulder, which had basically shattered it. Pieces of bone had come off and were dying and rotting away. It’s no wonder she could hardly put weight on that leg. It was incredibly interesting to watch the whole process of investigating and digging out the bullet. But it was also incredibly gruesome. I’ve seen a fair amount of necropsies and injuries, mostly baboon, but this was an elephant. Amanda dug the bullet out and the scouts said it was homemade from some melted old batteries. Pretty fucked up. She was also just shot so unnecessarily, so sloppily. These poachers just shoot without thinking or without knowledge. They don’t know how to properly kill animals, and instead just wound them and inflict nothing but suffering.

The bullet 

The worst part came at the end when the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) staff had to take her tusks. They have to take them and log them as evidence of the poaching and to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands anyways. To save you from hearing about too much gruesome-ness, just trust me when I say it was one of the most surreal and upsetting things I’ve ever seen first-hand.

The whole ordeal was pretty surreal and at the time I thought it was just a really interesting experience. I mean, how many people get to see that? After I spent the rest of the day in the bush looking for my baboons, it really started to hit me about how fucked up and upsetting it really all ways. Sorry for the language, but there’s really no other way to put it when talking about a dead elephant due to poaching. This week has been intense, upsetting, tiring, and taxing. Dan and I were talking just yesterday about how absolutely crazy that whole experience was, and about how upsetting it both made us later on, how it was a weird couple of days. Definitely something we will never forget and will always share between the small group of us.

I’ve added just a few photos. The rest I think are more than everyone really wants to see.