Elephant herd Zakouma National Park, Chad
For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region have learned that at the first sign of horsemen their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.
Today this is no defence the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped, there hasn’t been a single poaching incident in 5 years, as soon as the elephants started to feel secure, they began to breed again, at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.
All of this poaching led to Zakouma’s elephants forming a single large dysfunctional herd that included adult bulls, that would ordinarily have been pushed out of the herd, perhaps because of how much the population has grown, the big herd does seem to have started to split into several large herds rather than one single one. Although they are now safe, elephants have long memories, they remain extremely nervous and are difficult to find and approach.
Your best chance of seeing them is to wait for them to come to the Salamat River to drink, having established from park HQ where they are first, so that you know where best to wait. This is not fool proof, we tried this and missed them, finally we chanced upon the big herd in the south of the park, whilst they were out in the open, they didn’t remain in the open for long and quickly ran back into the bush, even though we were a long distance away. We knew that we should not try to pursue them in the car, that we would never get close, we would just cause further panic and cause them to keep running the last thing we wanted. However, as we were driving away, we could still see them moving through the bush, so our professional guide Zarek Cockar, decided we should try and approach them on foot, we were able to get a good view as they passed by, without them being aware of us at all. Seeing so many young elephants was fantastic, given the history of this herd.
Elephant herd Zakouma National Park, Chad
For roughly 6 months of the year between June and November Zakouma National Park is almost entirely inundated with floodwaters at this time elephants would often disperse into the surrounding area of what is now the Salamat Faunal Reserve. During this time Arab horsemen from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan would come to hunt the elephants as they had done for perhaps several hundred years. Traditionally a group of up to 20 horsemen armed with lances would charge a herd aiming to separate out one of the elephants. A single horseman would then ride in front of this elephant to draw its attention and get it to pursue him allowing the other men to ride in and spear it from behind with their lances. They would aim for the elephant’s hamstrings in its hind legs which if severed would bring the animal down and ensure it could not get up again. Huge numbers of elephants were killed this way and in response the surviving herds in the region have learned that at the first sign of horsemen their best defence is bunch up into tight groups to ensure that no individual can be separated out.
Today this is no defence the horsemen are Janjaweed militiamen and members of the Sudanese armed forces and they come not with the lances used by their ancestors but with AK47s, belt-fed machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. This habit of bunching up into a single large herd has meant that the poachers can easily kill 50-60 elephants in a single attack by simply machine gunning the terrified animals as they try to escape. In 2005 an aerial count found 3,885 elephants in Zakouma and the surrounding area in under a decade the population was reduced to just 430 and had stopped breeding due to the constant stress. Since African Parks took over Zakouma the poaching has been almost entirely stopped, there hasn’t been a single poaching incident in 5 years, as soon as the elephants started to feel secure, they began to breed again, at the last count in 2021 the population had reached 636.
All of this poaching led to Zakouma’s elephants forming a single large dysfunctional herd that included adult bulls, that would ordinarily have been pushed out of the herd, perhaps because of how much the population has grown, the big herd does seem to have started to split into several large herds rather than one single one. Although they are now safe, elephants have long memories, they remain extremely nervous and are difficult to find and approach.
Your best chance of seeing them is to wait for them to come to the Salamat River to drink, having established from park HQ where they are first, so that you know where best to wait. This is not fool proof, we tried this and missed them, finally we chanced upon the big herd in the south of the park, whilst they were out in the open, they didn’t remain in the open for long and quickly ran back into the bush, even though we were a long distance away. We knew that we should not try to pursue them in the car, that we would never get close, we would just cause further panic and cause them to keep running the last thing we wanted. However, as we were driving away, we could still see them moving through the bush, so our professional guide Zarek Cockar, decided we should try and approach them on foot, we were able to get a good view as they passed by, without them being aware of us at all. Seeing so many young elephants was fantastic, given the history of this herd.