AFTER THE DROUGHT

In Africa the seasons can flow one into the next and sometimes the rain just does not fall. For about 4 years we have not had decent rain when suddenly, after a few heavy downpours, the dams rose from being about 30% full to some overflowing and the dams in Nelson Mandela Metropole in South Africa are in the region of 80% of capacity. Of course the water restrictions are still on – the wheels of municipal bureaucracy turn even slower than the drought cycle.

Luckily the floods were minor with no loss of life and just a lot of suffering, cold and inconvenience for the poor. Living in shacks means that your roof does leak and with the wind driving the rain into the sides of the shack the walls also leak. Large rocks are used to hold down sheets of zinc that are the preferred roofing material. After the rain everything has to be brought out into the open to dry and is a feature of life in the poorer parts of the world. In the picture above you see blankets, clothes and mats drying on the fence. On the roof rows of shoes dry in the sun. To me this is such a typical African picture – we love the colours of the clothes and blanket but do tend to forget the suffering that goes coupled with it. Above the house you see a satellite television dish, something very African too. Being poor or living in a shack does not mean you have to forego luxuries or dreams. Even better, behind the houses, you see the approaching rows of new houses that are slowly replacing the shacks. Sure the process is slow and everyone complains from those who have received the houses to those who are still waiting. The change is slow but still good.

Reservoirs - before and after

NW England has been warned that if substantial rain does not fall over the Lake District in the next week or so, much of the will be subject to hosepipe bans.  It seems odd that Cumbria, a county that was devastated by some of the worst floods in memory, should now be suffering from drought. Vey little rain has fallen over the last three months and temperatures have soared to the high 20s increasing demand.


Stuart Baines was about and about in the Lake District last autumn and now he has returned to supply a set of images showing the extreme low water levels that now exist. The pair of images below show Thirlmere in Autumn 2009 and from the same viewpoint in July 2010.

Thirlmere is  the main reservoir for Manchester and its looking very empty! Sadly the geography of the area means that the water runs off the land into lakes and rivers and flows quickly into the ocean rather than seeping down through the rocks to replenish the aquifers.

Lions kill elephant calf

Over the last couple of years I have been lucky enough to spend time filming for various projects in Amboseli, Kenya. During a shoot for Animal Planet last year I was out with the women of the Amboseli Trust For Elephants (ATE) early one morning when a call came in from Lion Researchers working in the area. They had witnessed two young male lions chasing an elephant calf which had somehow become separated from it's mother.

We raced to the scene whilst discussing what exactly we would do once we got there. Would we try and intervene or let nature take it's course? By the time we arrived the decision was taken from us. The lions had already managed to bring the calf down.

As there was nothing we could do to help the calf, Soila, Noraha and Katito began to search he area for signs of the calf's family in order to try and identify the calf. The ATE is a charity established scientist Cynthia Moss in Amboseli in 1972 and has undertaken the longest study of elephant populations in the world. The women of the trust undertake daily census's of the elephants within the park and know by name almost all the 1,500 or so elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem.

Despite years of experience in the field this was the first time lions killing an elephant calf had been witnessed by the women and they were very keen to establish the reasons behind this unusual occurrence.

As we searched for signs of a distressed mother, I noticed a large bull elephant approaching the lions. Clearly agitated the bull advanced towards the lions, temples streaming and sniffing the air. When he was almost upon the carcass he let out a huge trumpet and the lions scattered.

From a distance the elephant could see the calf was lifeless and bloody and he slowly moved off and the lions returned to the kill. At this point there was no sign of other families in the area and the lions took the opportunity to drag the calf towards cover.

Soila then notice a family in the distance sniffing the air and looking very disturbed. They approached the area very carefully, crowding together with the young calf's being ushered into the middle of the herd. As they neared the area where the calf was killed they became increasingly agitated. Eventually they gathered around the area where the calf had lain and was now covered in blood. The elephants slowly combed the area with their trunks trying to pick up the scent of the calf

After some time the elephants moved on very cautiously scanning the bush for signs of Lions.

Although the family was known to the Soila, Norah and Katito they couldn't say with any certainty that the calf belonged to this family. The calf was around 18 months old and as such was very hard to identify outwith the family group and with so many families in the ecosystem it would take some time to work out who exactly the unfortunate calf belonged to.

Occurrences of Lions killing elephant calf's' appear to be quite rare in Amboseli and in conjunction with the lion researchers the women established that possibly due to the drought (the worst in living memory) the young male lions had been pushed out of the pride to fend for themselves the previous week. Mounting hunger must have lead to the lions looking for an easy target and presumably a mother and calf separated from the herd would have made a reasonable target.

Last year the ATE estimate that 80-90% of the Wildebeest population was lost along with 70% of the Zebra and around 200 elephants The good news is after 3 years the drought in Amboseli broke in January and the ecosystem is slowly returning to normal and large aggregations of elephants are returning to the park along with the big bulls in musth.