FURTHER TREATMENT FOR DE-SNARED ELEPHANT

Last September our WERU vet, Amanda, removed a snare from an elephant’s right front leg in Liwonde National Park. However, recently the de-snared elephant had been seen throwing dust on the leg and bathing it, indicating the injury from the snare is still causing him some upset. This can happen sometimes, where the snare causes more damage than is initially seen. We wanted to be able to monitor, assess, evaluate and treat the injury if necessary, and subsequently an elephant collar was kindly donated by African Wildlife Tracking so that we can do just that.

Last week we were able to re-capture the elephant and found that he had a large tumour resulting from the chronic irritation from the snare. Even though the snare had been removed, the tumour continued to grow causing much irritation and discomfort to him. Now that the initial assessment has been carried out, the collar will now help us to easily locate the elephant so that we can provide him with the further treatment he needs and keep a careful eye on him.