OKOMU: As dawn breaks over Nigeria’s Okomu National Park, an exhausted wildlife caretaker prepares milk formula for Agbaibor, a months-old orphaned forest elephant rescued after wandering out of the rainforest alone.
“The baby elephant has to take two liters of this per meal,” said Joshua Aribasoye, one of those responsible for feeding and monitoring the calf around the clock in a makeshift pen at a ranger outpost inside the park in southern Edo state.
Forest elephants, smaller and more elusive than their savannah cousins, are endangered and their population has collapsed in recent decades largely because of habitat loss and poaching.
Agbaibor — named after the ranger who helped rescue him — was found near a palm oil plantation bordering the protected forest late last year after being separated from the herd.
Rangers and conservationists tried to reunite the calf with its family by taking it back into the forest, but it soon wandered out again.
