Whole Community Helps Save An Elephant Trapped In The Mud

On Saturday March 5th, a whole community in Kenya rallied together to save a terrified and dehydrated elephant who was trapped in the mud. When the poor elephant was discovered in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, it wasclear that he had fallen into the mud pit the night before and exhausted himself trying to escape.

^{Source: @batian_kenya}

Jules Binks and her friend Batian Craig decided to give the parched elephant some water while they waited for rescue teams to arrive. The whole community was involved in the rescue including teams from theLewa Wildlife Conservancy, the Northern Rangelands TrustandSave the Elephants.The elephant was very timid at first but he soon figured out that the teams were there to help him. Binks added:

It's incredible how this wild powerful creature completely put his trust in us, I really felt like he knew we were there to help!

Another video of digging this incredibly bull out of the mud. It still amazes me how calm he was with all the noise going on around him. There was about 300 head of cattle being watered right next to him- you can just hear the singing of the herders. @lewa_wildlife @nrt @savetheelephantskenya #animalsofinstagram #videooftheday #elephant #wildlife #WhyILoveKenya #conservation #ignature #africaamazing #kenya #igkenya #elephantrescue

A video posted by Batian Craig (@batian_kenya) on Mar 6, 2016 at 4:49am PST

Finally, after four hours of manpower digging and pulling, the team managed to rescue the elephant. In a Facebook post, the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy said:

100 litres of water later, lots of digging, pulling, 3 cars and the whole community behind him, the joint team managed to get him out and he walked away. Community ownership of wildlife works. Thank you to all those that helped!

To make sure that theLewa Wildlife Conservancy can continue its mission of wildlife conservation, you can help support thesanctuaryhere.