Watchman Alfrescian Loyal Joined Mar 12, 2009 Messages 13,160 Points 0 Sep 30, 2009 #1 Kenya hit by killer drought By Peter Greste BBC News, Samburu National Park, Kenya Dead trees line a river in the Samburu National Park The region has not had a proper wet season for three years It was not hard to find the dead elephant. The stench of the rotting carcass made it easy to track down in the sparse bush. A young male - barely four years old and still an infant by elephant standards - lay on its side in the sand by a river. Around its feet, the sand had been cleared in small arcs - signs of the animal's thrashing as it struggled to stand and survive. But there was nothing to eat. Nothing. On the ground, not a blade of grass existed, every green shoot had been stripped from the trees. For Iain Douglas Hamilton, from the conservation organisation Save The Elephants, it was a heartbreaking sight. "In all my 12 years here, I've never seen anything as bad as this," he said. "The last long rains [in April] failed completely, and we haven't had a proper wet season for at least three years. If the rains fail in October and November, we'll go into total crisis. I can't even begin to imagine how awful that would be."
Kenya hit by killer drought By Peter Greste BBC News, Samburu National Park, Kenya Dead trees line a river in the Samburu National Park The region has not had a proper wet season for three years It was not hard to find the dead elephant. The stench of the rotting carcass made it easy to track down in the sparse bush. A young male - barely four years old and still an infant by elephant standards - lay on its side in the sand by a river. Around its feet, the sand had been cleared in small arcs - signs of the animal's thrashing as it struggled to stand and survive. But there was nothing to eat. Nothing. On the ground, not a blade of grass existed, every green shoot had been stripped from the trees. For Iain Douglas Hamilton, from the conservation organisation Save The Elephants, it was a heartbreaking sight. "In all my 12 years here, I've never seen anything as bad as this," he said. "The last long rains [in April] failed completely, and we haven't had a proper wet season for at least three years. If the rains fail in October and November, we'll go into total crisis. I can't even begin to imagine how awful that would be."
