PRESENTATIONS SESSION VII EX SITU BENEFITS AND SUPPORT OF IN SITU CONSERVATION The Bigger Picture: How captive facilities can benefit wild elephant populations

Sean Hensman

Manager, Adventures with

Bela Bela, Limpopo, South Africa.

We got our elephants in 1988, not to have as pets or to do Safaris, but to release onto a once commercial cropping farm which dad had converted into a Game Reserve so that we, as his children, could grow up learning about a range of animals in a wild environment. Dad enjoyed the African bush and this was his attempt to bring the Zambezi valley a little closer to home for all of us. We got our first elephants from culling operations in Zambezi and they arrived at 45 inches tall. We realized that they were too small to release as we had originally intended, so we put them in an enclosure and looked after them. This is where we learned that there was so much more to elephants than we had originally expected. They were eager to interact and within a few weeks they were following a handler about the farm. As time went on we got more and more orphans and problem elephants and as such landed up with a herd of 12 elephants on the farm.

If you have pets at home or look after animals you will understand how expensive they are, so we made them earn their keep by doing farm chores such as rounding up cattle, checking fences and conducting wildlife patrols.

As time went on we had more and more visitors coming out to visit the elephants which was one of our interests, and since the expenses were covered by the farm and dad liked people learning about the elephants in this unique manner, we allowed people to interact with them for free. Though the elephants weren’t originally planned to be our pets, we enjoyed spending time with our elephants, as one would with their pet dog or horse, great symbiotic relationships happened between us and the elephants, we landed up doing some incredible things with them.

However, Dad realized that he could reach a wider audience and teach a wider range of people about the elephants if he got into tourism, so our first herd was sent up to Victoria Falls in 1993 and began doing Elephant Safaris. After that we got another 12 elephants which we started to train for anti-poaching in the Zambezi Valley where 33,000 rhino were lost in a 20-year period. Dad’s plan was to assist anti-poaching teams with their mobility issues, as the great thing with the elephant is that they can go anywhere, were built for all the African conditions, never need to be refuelled or retreaded and can follow a scent. Incidentally we successfully used them to track down a robber who had broken into our next door neighbour’s house in Zimbabwe when the police dogs couldn’t.

Unfortunately we had to leave Zimbabwe before we could get involved in anti-poaching and moved to South Africa in 2002. The elephants provided us a lifeline and since then we have carried on with public elephant activities.

Today we bring in problem elephants that are going to be destroyed and give them a second chance by training them for public education activities, telling people about the elephant in general as well

Page 1 of 6 as the plight facing wild populations and conservationists in an ever changing Africa. The first elephant we tamed in South Africa was Tembo, a 32-year old 6 ton bull. He caused over R1 million worth of damage to a game lodge in 6 months; he broke into buildings, turned over vehicles, killed buffalo and even rhino. One can imagine that he was not a very popular elephant, and he was going to be destroyed. Today he is educating people at Elephant Whispers in Hazyview, near the Kruger National Park.

We are not a government funded operation and earn a living from our elephants. The elephants were always seen as part of our family and we get immense joy from them, in turn we looked after