Jumbos go on rampage in Kagera
MEDDY MULISA, Bukoba
Daily News; Thursday,April 12, 2007 @00:02

EVERY elephant they say, has the right of vote and in Karagwe District jumbos are not only stamping their feet down but have gone on rampage attacking villages and treating themselves to local banana wine ‘Orubisi’ which they quite savour, village and game officials said.

At least one elderly woman, Salome Bebwa (70), was trampled to death at Rwensheke Village when a herd of about 200 elephants broke from the Burigi Game Reserve over the weekend and drove through Rujoka, Kabale and Omukaliro villages, destroying crops and raining mayhem over panic stricken villagers, the District Natural Resources Officer, Mr Rama Massele, said.

His department herded the beasts back to their sanctuary but it was too late for poor Bebwa, he said.

The Nyakasimbi Ward Councillor, Mr Stanton Mugenyi, told the ‘Daily News’ yesterday that around 800 families at Rujoka and Kabale villages and 1,200 others at Omukaliro and Rwensheke desperately needed food aid following invasion by the elephants.

Mr Massele said this was the third year in a row that elephants have invaded villages in the district. The beasts, which are pure herbivores, were fond of ripe bananas and sipping the ‘Orubisi’ also enjoyed by humans, but with the jumbos raiding from the jungle to prove mighty is right.

Tanzania is home to several thousand elephants with the largest concentration of their number believed to be in the Selous Game Reserve, area larger than Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland all left to wildlife.

Massive poaching for their ivory almost drove them to threatened status in the Selous in the early 1980s when an estimated 50,000 only were left from a population that was once six times that much. The animals have an extremely poor sight and equally small brain relative to their six-ton figure. However, the beasts have an acute sense of smell and memory.

They are said to be able to sense water from very great distances and even deep in the ground. Without water they are almost dead and they never stop feeding, day and night.

Elephants have beacon-like memory for the route they took, which could help to explain why they keep returning to the villages. Unlike their Indian cousins, African elephants have proved impossible to tame.

quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:
Unlike their Indian cousins, African elephants have proved impossible to tame.

Codswallop.