The elusive elephants didn’t allow Dr Chege to help them, he arrived on Sunday and had to leave today but the head vet at KWS Francis Gakuya has been very helpful and freed up another vet to take over from tomorrow. It is so difficult to help when you have to wait for them to emerge, and it is always Murphy’s law that they come when the vets have left. I have a photo of an elephant that lost his leg and later his life which I will post now, apologies for the graphic image but it brings the reality home. It very unlikely they will survive in the wild if they loose a leg especially if they are untreaed because infection in this kind of environment sets in quickly. I hope Dr Nyamweya has more luck. Edwin will keep watching out for them. We are lucky that Edwin has been there to assist us for so long, and I am finally able to employ him full time as of the end of this month. He will be part of our new joint anti poaching unit.

Over the next few days I have to concentrate on the Elephant Corridor project which we have support from Virgin Atlantic, the Dutch Goverment and Safaricom for. I am holding a meeting near Timau in the Northern Mt Kenya region in a few days time with my elephant corridor committee. After years of putting this project together we have most of the funding in place and we will be discussing the fencing phaseses of the project. I am hopeful that we will be able to get a contractor to start on the fencing by the beginning of next year, we are putting the job out to tender soon. There is a great deal to consider and we need to ensure we have the best fence possible so that we can make the corridor a great success. The other part of the project is underpasses so that the elephants avoid busy roads - it’s an incredibly unique project so you’ll here more about that as we progress. We need to raise a further 200,000 US$ for the project.

I am already beginning work on the 10 to 4 mountain bike challenge - something I organise with a team of volunteers every year. We will have the 2008 event on February 16th and I will need to have the entry forms prepared well in advance. It’s the 10 to 4 because cyclists travel from 10,000 ft above sea level down to just over 4,000 ft near the Ngare Ndare River in the dry country below. The synergy of the event for the Trust is exciting because it almost runs exaclty paralell to the elephant corridor - symbolising the necessary link between ecosystems and the need to keep these routes open for wildlife and habitats to survive in the long term. This year’s event was a great success raising over 2 million Kenya shillings which goes towards Mt Kenya Trust’s projects including fencing, anti poaching and tree planting and a portion also goes towards an education Trust for kids in the area. I hope that the 2008 event will be even more fruitful. We have already pledged some of the money towards the running of the joint anti poacing team because althogh we have the set up costs we don’t have all the running costs as yet. Once it is in place I am so hopeful that there will be fewer elephants going through such horrific pain.

I’m going to have to leave it at that for now, hopefully I’ll be able to post more tomorrow or Thursday. I am still making my way around how to respond to people’s questions and how to manage this blogging business but I am going to blogging well succeed.

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