LAST year I had the chance to meet some adorable baby elephants in a Nairobi orphanage in Kenya.
Almost straight from the get-go they treated me like one of the herd, playing with my hair and sniffing my wheelchair.
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As much as I loved spending time with these beautiful creatures, it was a visit that was tinged with sadness.
All 13 of these calves had either lost their parents or been abandoned in the search to find the basics of survival — food and water.
When one was rescued by keepers, he was being circled by lions, ready to eat him.
I’ve been to Kenya many, many times over the last five years.
But in the last two decades towns and cities have been getting larger, while animal habitats are getting smaller.
While in Britain we might see foxes going through our bins, Kenyans are starting to live alongside these mischievous creatures.
Elephant poaching — thanks to conservation charities — has gone down by 70 per cent in recent years.
But now climate change means they are having to travel further and further to reach water.
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As part of BBC1 series Our Changing Planet I visited Tsavo National Park in Kenya’s Taru desert.
Forty per cent of the country’s elephant population live in the park, and when I visited in December, the rains were two months late and the area was as dry as a bone.
The drought means elephants are finding it harder to find watering holes — where they both eat and drink.
They need 225 litres of water and a humongous 300kg of food every day.
They usually stay at the watering hole as long as they possibly can while eating all the foliage around them.
When that runs out, they move on to the next watering hole where they can eat even more vegetation.
But with the drought, these oases are getting further and further apart.
Now, when they eat all that’s on offer, the elephants are faced with a dilemma — do they stay where they are and risk starving or do they walk hundreds of miles to find the next oasis?
When parents are nursing, they need even more food than usual, so those with children will need to urgently find water.
Adult elephants can cover vast distances with no problem but their babies are too small to keep up.
Tragically we are seeing these calves abandoned by their herd and being left to fend for themselves, which is really sad.
Can you imagine that as a parent — you have a choice between water or food?
But as tragic as it is, this is not just an issue for elephants.
They are what is known as a keystone species — they have a huge positive effect on the environment around them.
Elephants eat foliage and then through their dung they disperse seeds across huge distances.
The seeds then grow into plants, creating more food for both animals and humans.
And in Kenya there are an estimated 21 million farm workers struggling because of drought too.
And hungry elephants will trample on to farmland and eat crops, causing further problems.
While I was in Kenya, I saw a really exciting dam project being put into place to create a natural oasis.
The AFRICA Sand Dam Foundation’s project was inspired by the elephants themselves.
When a pipe which takes water from the mountains to Mombasa was leaking, the elephants sniffed out the water and were drawn to it.
Now the charity is using the natural resources to build 25 dams in the Tsavo conservation area.
‘NATIONAL IDENTITY’
The sand will act like a sponge in the rainy season and provide water when elephants dig in the dry season.
This project will support a whole host of wildlife — including the elephants themselves.
It will take years to come to fruition but I’m hoping to travel back in the next few years to see the progress.
It was a privilege to see baby elephants and to be able to touch them and interact with them in the orphanage.
But they were there for all the wrong reasons. And the more of these cute calves they bring into the orphanage, the worse the problem is getting.
Their keeper, Julius, told me how Kenya’s national identity is so closely tied with the elephant. To see a species going through such a hard time is heartbreaking.
Maybe the closest comparison is if this started happening to our beloved pet cats and dogs here in the UK.
Elephants are seen as an important symbol of Kenya and a bellwether for the health of our planet. I can’t imagine a world without them.
But with innovation hopefully we will see pockets of lush oases, meaning shorter distances for these beautiful creatures to travel to survive.
In the near future I’m hoping there will be no need for elephant orphanages.
- Our Changing Planet begins on Sunday at 7pm on BBC One.
ADE met baby elephants at the Nairobi Elephant Nursery in Kenya, which opened in 1987.
The orphanage is run by The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the longest-running elephant rehab and rescue programme in the world.
The nursery’s first baby, OImeg, was reintroduced into Tsavo National Park in 1989.
By 2010 the charity had rescued 100 elephant calves.
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