Elephants

  In the rainy season we don’t see many elephants at Sinamatella. Presumably they move out into the Park to feed while there is natural water available to them.

Sinamatella flood plain, December 2011

In the dry season however, elephants, and plenty of them, become a part of every day.

We meet them wherever we drive…..

  And wherever there is water……

..from morning to sunset.

   The adults can be intimidating…….

  but the babies are cute…….

   Elephants are incredibly destructive…….

Baobab tree felled and part eaten by elephants

Water pipe broken by elephants at Shumba

They change the landscape…..

Elephant-damaged Mopane scrub in the foreground, mature Mopane trees behind.

   And they become part of it when they die.

  There are surely far too many………

   But we’d miss them if they were gone.