On July 5 I had the pleasure of being accompanied by Mr. Gadimang and Mr. Khan to go on patrol. We met with wardens from Ihaha and inspected carcass of elephant they burned at Hatab1 and also the elephant that was dragged from river the day before We thanked them for their good work.
On the way back we had a report of sick elephant that appeared to have a snare on its leg at Water cart. On arrival we noticed a wound on its hind left leg and noticed that it was very depressed and obviously ill.
We darted it with 14 mg of Etorphine. Elephant moved off into bush. After one hour of searching for elephant we finally found it. It had fallen on its chest and was comfortable and breathing properly. We attempted to pull him on his side with my car winch but winch failed and broke.
We noticed wound on top of its spine that was weeping with infection. I treated him with antibiotics and pain killers. On administering antidote elephant awakened but could not raise up.
On movement of animal in its attempt to rise the wound on its spine opened up and about 6 liters of Pus exuded from here. It was then obvious that this wound was made by an AK-47 bullet as they had attempted to spine shoot it. This is second elephant in 2 days poached so anti poaching was put on alert
We left elephant and returned the next day. It still was unable to raise up as the wound had been very close to the spine. I had to euthanize it.
The following day we attempted to remove tusks with help from 5 wardens. It was my belief that a chainsaw would make the job easy but discovered that this was not the case. The Axe I provided broke so we had to abandon that project and return in a week to remove tusks after decomposition.
Personnel at parks complained they had no basic equipment such as masks, axes and knifes to be able to complete such tasks.
