THIS is the dramatic moment park rangers have a life-or-death battle trying to save a stricken elephant from an agonisingly slow death as it sinks deeper and deeper into a remote mud-pit.
An anti-poaching patrol in Kenya heard the mournful trumpeting from the seven-ton male bull trapped up to its shoulders in a would-be-grave having wandered into a sugar cane field at night without seeing the peril.
They alerted the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – founded by a British Dame nearly 50 years ago – whose grandson Roan Carr-Hartley, 25, flew an hour to the scene to help a team of a dozen rangers try to rescue the elephant.
In a three-hour operation in 40-degree heat Roan and he rangers avoided the deadly trunk of the terrified beast as they fought to get large rubber straps behind its rear legs and attach it to a safari truck to pull it to safety.
And after a dozen failed attempts in which the elephant kept slipping back into the mud’s deadly grip near the village of Chakama to the cheers of the rescuers he was finally dragged free and back onto all fours.
The elephant was given a second chance of life as it got his breath back and then rejoined his two fellow bulls under trees nearby.
For action man Roan – who has hit the headlines many times before including for a daring helicopter rescue of a man trapped on his lorry after it was swept away by floods – it was just another day in his African office.
Roan said: “This big old elephant was crossing over a flood plain when he got himself literally into quite a sticky situation falling iinto a mud hole in the dark and finding himself neck-deep in thick soupy natural trap..
“It was in a big sugar cane field and he had probably sneaked in during the night to have a bit of a night time feast witjh two of his pals when he slipped in and he was lucky that it was hot a few feet deeper.
“The pit had slippery walls all around him and it was simply too steep for him to escape alone and it was getting more and more exhausted and things were not looking good for it when the patrol found him.
“We got a shout from the Kenyan Wildlife Service and our own rangers for help and we flew down to lend a hand as rescuing elephants from mud holes is something we do and once alerted we have not failed on one yet.
“We found this bull elephant was well and truly stuck over shoulder but what it made it harder and more dangerous was it was still moving freely. That meant that it was able to thrash around with its trunk if we got close.
“Usually when they are trapped in the mud like this they are locked firmly in place allowing us to place straps around it safely without the risk of being trampled but this was much harder to get the rescue straps in.
“Finally we mangaged to loop the straps around the bull and the guys began to drag it out inch by inch to get this seven-ton brute out of the sinkhole and after a lot of failed efforts we finalluy tuugged the big fella free.
“You have to remember the elephant when stuck like this is expecting to be attacked by predators and eaten so it perceives humans as just as much a threat and does not get a sense we are helping so lashes out.
“If you get within a trunk reach or slip into the mud near it then a very quick and unpleasant end can follow.
“It was a very challenging 3 hour rescue in real heat but the team didn’t give up and a life was saved leaving the team with a deep feeling of accomplishment as the elephant walked off into the bush” he said.
Roan revealed that the villagers seen in the video on the hill overlooking were all carrying machetes and buckets and would have chopped up the elephant for bush meat if they had not been able to save its life.
He said: “It is entirely normal as that is a big heap of free meat lying there if he had died and that is the reality of it. But we have never failed to rescue an elephant stuck in the mud so far so lunch was cancelled!
“We once had an elephant stuck in a mud hole 2km from the nearest dry land so had to tie 2 km’s of ropes together to reach it and then drag it through the bush for 2km’s until it was able to be saved” he said.
The SWT is no stranger to rescuing elephants from the mud and in the last year has saved 17 stuck in similar predicaments who would otherwise have drowned or died from sheer exhaustion and left to be eaten.
The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is one of Africa’s most respected wildlife charities and a global leader in elephant conservation and was founded in 1977 by Dame Daphne Sheldrick in memory of husband David.
Daphne passed in 2018 aged 83 and her daughter Angela is currently CEO and her sons Roan, 23, and Taru, 25, are both wildlife conservation pilots for the 49-year-old trust that rewilds orphaned elephants.
In 1989 its founder Daphne was awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of her conservation work and in 2006 was promoted to Dame Commander of Order of the British Empire once again by the Queen.
