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Victims of the Amboseli
By David Todd, Sheffield Telegraph, 26 November 2009
SHEFFIELD-BORN photographer Alwyn Coates is more used to focusing on celebrity subjects including Jerry Hall, Val Kilmer, Matt Lucas and Jordan – but there is little doubt where his real passion lies.
Alwyn recently returned from Kenya where he captured the plight of many animals living through the country's worst-ever drought and now he hopes his stunning – often haunting – images will raise awareness of the problems as part of his voluntary work with the Born Free Foundation.
The Amboseli Game Reserve in Kenya has not seen significant rainfall in more than three years as climate change has turned lush grasslands to desert.
The cost in animal terms has been great, with more than 50 elephants dying aleady this year – around 5 per cent of the area's total population.
Alwyn said: "My first introduction to Amboseli was sitting in the Born Free Land-Rover in the middle of a dust storm. Visibility was zero. You couldn't see the front of the car. Dust was seeping in through every crack, filling the interior, making breathing difficult. The four of us sat with our shirts up over our faces.
"What must it have been like for the animals outside you could only imagine.
"Locals I talked to said that the dust storms are more frequent these days but don't last long and are actually the sign of rain coming.
"That evening back at the lodge I found myself looking out over the the Amboseli desert with huge rain clouds overhead, thinking great, at last it's going to rain. But the rain never came. This has been the story for three years."
Alwyn's reputation has grown through his fashion and advertising work and a mounting number of celebrity commissions. He is currently showing work at two prestigious exhibitions in the capital. It was on one fashion shoot that his links with the Born Free Foundation were forged. "I was doing a shoot for TM Lewin and one of the models was a lad called Dan Travers. The conversation somehow got round to wildlife and I told him of my lifelong love of elephants and he suggested I got in touch with his mum's charity.
"I wasn't sure what he meant but it turned out he was the son of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, founders of the Born Free Foundation."
Alwyn took up the offer and has done work for the foundation ever since.
"I always say that my day job allows me to go off and do all the other stuff. I'm going back to Africa before Christmas all being well and then to Borneo in the New Year to photograph orangutans."
Many of his images are used by Born Free to raise awareness of their various campaigns and Alwyn also aims to put his pictures in book form, which he will print himself with any profits going to the foundation.
"When you get the opportunity to see these magnificent animals in their natural habitat it is a real privilege. But when you see the difficulties they face, you automatically want to help.
"The thing that sticks in my mind was when we saw a huge bull elephant in the distance and I asked the ranger to drive us over to get some shots. When we got there the elephant was not moving at all and one leg had swollen to about twice the size of the other.
"It had been injured by a poisoned spear and the ranger was going to put it down. I felt awful, almost as though it had been my fault for drawing attention to it. But I managed to persuade him to leave it for 24 hours and, if it had still not moved by the time we returned, he was probably right.
"When we came back the next day this magnificent animal, which was about 65 years old, had moved to a waterhole about a mile away and seemed much more alert, so I like to think there was a happy ending to that particular story.
"There have been droughts before, of course, but times have changed. When such conditions existed in the past the elephants and other animals would simply move to other places to find water. But over time they have been left with less and less land to live on. Elephants need water every day and as the local water holes dry up they start to walk longer distances. The lack of rain means less and less vegetation and in the end the land dries up and turns into a desert.
"Huge herds split up trying to find food and water. And elephants are crossing over to Tanzania and finding food in farms. Farmers attack elephants protecting what precious crops they have, elephants then don't trust humans and attack them, escalating the animal-human conflict."
Reassurance for Tourists
DESPITE the drought, people who may have booked holidays or are thinking of visiting Amboseli have no need to worry.
Alwyn Coates said: "The drought is not affecting hotels or clean safe drinking water, as its bottled anyway. Hotels have their own water stores.
"In fact some lodges have visiting wildlife at their animal waterholes. Night after night at the moment elephants stroll by and it is fascinating to watch.
"Amboseli is a small national game reserve and has a high concentration of animals. Tourists have a good chance of seeing elephants, giraffe, lions, cheetahs, birds, zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, hyena and many more.