Elephant victims of encounters with humans

What would you do?

It's around 6am. The sun has just begun to rise over the eastern hills and as you walk out of your hut, you find 2 large bull elephants in the centre of your village.

You've never seen them up so close before. You know they can kill you. Destroy your house. Harm your family. And you start to shout and scream.

Panic? Fear?
More of your neighbours come out of their huts and the shouting intensifies. The instinctive reaction is perhaps to defend by attacking.

The spears appear. The bows and the arrows appear. Yet more people appear.

The elephants too must be scared. Panicked. They are being hurt. They try to escape. More people appear as the noise rises, and a chase is on.

For 8 hours on a warm July day, a group of 500 non-Maasai villagers chase and hound the two elephants .Eventually the 2 beasts are cornered in separate rocky pockets of land. At 3pm that afternoon, they finally succumb to the hail of arrows and spears.

Blame? Outrage?
It is a distressing story, and it is not the only one. How can such events be prevented?

It is still illegal to kill elephants in Kenya, but the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) are unlikely to seek out the main culprits. Perhaps because there were too many people involved. Perhaps because, in part, the initial reaction of fear, defence, attack is a natural one - an understandable one - despite the almost frenzied like chase that seemingly appeared to ensue.

Whatever the cause, one core fact remains: if humans and elephants are to live together as peacefully as they can, then both must be given space to do so.