Thirteen elephants born in captivity in the Europe will board a Boeing 777 cargo plane in June and be flown to Kenya, where they will be released into the wild.
The relocation of the eight females and five males to a sanctuary off the East African nation’s Indian Ocean coast will cost 950,000 pounds ($1.2 million), according to the Aspinall Foundation, the conservation group behind the initiative. The animals, aged between one and 34 years, are currently housed in an 8-acre (3.2-hectare) enclosure at Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent.
"The Aspinall Foundation believes that these animals belong in the wild, and that no elephants belong in captivity,” said the charity, which hopes the project will set an example to other zoos to free their pachyderms.
The journey will take at least 12 hours, with four hours of transfers and an eight-hour flight. The 13 Kent elephants are descendants of animals from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa, and the initiative to release them into the wild is a world first, according to Aspinall.
Satellite Collars
The animals will initially be placed in enclosures, where they will begin interacting with wild elephants for at least six months. They’ll later be released to the roam the entire 60,000-acre conservation area, with the matriarch and the younger bulls fitted with satellite collars for tracking, the charity said.
In July last year, Kenyan authorities said they were not consulted on the planned elephant relocation.
"Relocating and rehabilitation of an animal from a zoo is not easy and is an expensive affair,” Kenya’s tourism and wildlife ministry said on Twitter at the time. Najib Balala, the cabinet secretary, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
