Saving orphaned elephants

Despite elephant pouching being banned in Africa, hunters continue to kill many of the elephants. This leaves a large number of orphaned baby elephants who are unable to feed themselves and are often abandoned by the rest of their herd.

However, there is now hope for the orphaned elephants in Zambia thanks to 33 year old British woman, Rachael Murton.

Rachel is the project manager at the Lilayi Elephant Nursery where she organises fund-raisers and educates locals about how they can help the elephants.

Most importantly, Rachel spends her days nurturing the babies back to health.

The nursery opened in October 2012 and is funded by Game rangers International Elephant Orphanage Project. The nursery is the only orphanage for the abandoned elephants in Africa.

Rachel has worked with a wide variety of wildlife in the UK, Asia and Alaska. Her passion for saving the elephant calves came from Suni, a 2 year old calf who had been attacked by an axe by the poachers who had killed her mother.

Suni will never be able to return to the wild due to the special metal boot she has to wear due to her severe injuries. However she is now doing fine and happily resides at the nursery.

Although this orphanage does a great job of helping the calves that they can, many are still left alone in the wild due to the continuous loss of parent elephants.

It is important for people to stop paying for ivory, which is the main reason for the killing of elephants.

Article written by  D Mulhern

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