“Our” elephant Ludwig

As you can see in the "Previous Projects" section, our association sponsored a GPS collar to CWF and Dr Richard Hoare for €5000 in 2018. It weighed over 16 kg. A very strong bull elephant in Hwange National Park was chosen to wear the collar. Because of the sponsorship, we were allowed to name him. He was named Ludwig.

The removal of the collar had required a great logistical effort. In addition to the 700 km journey from Harare to the place where Ludwig was assumed to be, it took another 2 days to find the elephant. Why so long, if one knows by means of GPS exactly where he is? Quite simply. The data was sent to Liverpool via satellite. In the bush, however, one cannot receive this satellite data.

Also conducting from Liverpool with the cell phone did not work without cell phone reception.  Since the collar had also sent out a VHF signal, it was necessary to use it to locate the elephant. For this action our association took over the costs of 2000 €.

The monitoring of the elephant or the data sent by the collar was done from the University of Liverpool. For 2 years the system worked perfectly. Then it became apparent that the battery had depleted. The number of signals was then reduced slightly so that the elephant could continue to be tracked without any problems until August 2021. The result of the recordings was that the bull did not cover such long distances as had previously been assumed. The reason for this was mainly the drought of 2019/20, where the elephant had to conserve its strength and was also not allowed to move too far away from the water sources. In 2021, the bull elephant was located thanks to its radio signals after a 2-day search. He was properly anaesthetised by Dr Richard Hoare. In a short time, his collar had been removed.

If you know the elephants' routes, you can also protect the animals better. Moreover, elephants with a GPS collar are more likely to be avoided by poachers. (The GPS collar worn by the famous lion Cecil quickly exposed the American dentist Walter Palmer as the one who had killed this lion in 2015).

Ludwig has thus done great service to science by wearing the heavy collar. However, it is not just the battery that should be replaced now. The collar will be refurbished by a company in South Africa and fitted with a new battery. The next wearer will be a younger bull elephant near the Victoria Falls in the KAZA conservation area. (KAZA stands for Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. It is a transfrontier nature and landscape reserve involving the countries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. With an area of 520,000 km², the park is about 40 % larger than Germany. But if you only include the national parks it contains, it has a size of about 287,000 km². The area of Germany, by comparison, is 357,386 km²).

Steve Alexander putting on the collar in 2018, with wildlife vet Dr Richard Hoare in the background.
Steve puts the collar on Ludwig 2018
2021 then preparing for the search of Ludwig in the huge Hwange National Park, Dr Richard Hoare prepares the anaesthetic gun and the search aerial
Search with the antenna on the roof
After 2 days in the bush Ludwig was found. He has huge tusks.
Wildlife vet Dr. Richard Hoare (with green shirt), his wife Sian Brown (with brown blouse) and the accompanying rangers made sure that Ludwig survived everything well

The publication of the current tracking pictures of Ludwig available to me was deliberately omitted in order not to put the poachers on Ludwig's trail.