The Milgis Trust

Category: Conservation Awareness, elephants | Date: Aug 26 2009 | By: milgistrust

What happened to all the birds in Europe?? Or were they never there?? .. Is a question I have been asking for the last five weeks!!.. I have just got back from my first holiday abroad for many years.. France, Norway, Spain and Portugal… living the high life, I’m afraid… It has been incredibly good for me, to see how the rest of the world lives, and to know how the people who come on safari live, and where!…We have been completely spoilt, and seen some lovely country.. My first problem was to get a visa… They wanted to know all my personal details, who, how, when and what!, and all I wanted to do was go on holiday!..We are not so used to that in Kenya!.. But I got one and off we went… My next problem was how to turn the tap on in the airport on arrival.. I pushed and pulled every thing I could, until somebody came in and I watched with interest that she put her hands under the tap and out came the water… Actually I thought that the water had run out, like our Kenya taps are doing all too often now!! But thats one thing Europe won’t do as quickly as us out here in Africa…Every where we went there was incredible amounts of trees, enormous rivers, and dams, and still snow on the mountains, feeding these rivers… No snow left on our Mt Kenya.. or very little I’m afraid, but thats because we are busy cutting our trees down, if we are not cutting we are burning them…..But thats another story, that I won’t get into now, over population of people.. In Norway they have over population of trees, if they don’t cut them down, they fear they will become over run !! …. BUT where have the birds gone…now I know why people make comments on safari, about how noisy the birds are! and even more disappointing was how few wild animals we saw… We covered many many miles on ‘remote’ roads, and spent most of our time in isolated places, but saw very little…Except 16 real mountain goats in the Pyrenees!, which our hosts were so chuffed about, but it was that African eye that saw them..! ANYWAY it made me feel proud of our wildlife, and birds, and makes me even more determined to give them a safe haven to live in… My thoughts go back to how we can catch the flood water..

While we have been away I have kept in touch with the Milgis Trusts day to day activities, and apart from a very sad find of another Elephant that had died of multiple wounds from bullets, and spears, but they don’t know where it came from, as its not the normal colour of our Elephants..[ their skin is a different colour, depending on the mud they wallow in, and as its a rocky place our Elephants have less crevices in the soles of their feet.. Our Elephants soles are well worn!] Basically the harsh drought is taking its toll, with the young Elephants, and other wildlife, and of course the live stock, but every one is persevering, hanging in there, and keeping a positive mind for some rain soon.. GOOD RAIN PLEASE!!

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