Paddling the Yukon River, for elephants and rhinos

Marcus Savage and Peter Tyrrell from Kenya set off this week on a 1,600-kilometre race down the Yukon River. They're doing it to raise money for conservation efforts back home in Africa.

Kenyans Marcus Savage and Peter Tyrrell undertake epic race for anti-poaching charity

CBC News · Posted: Jul 23, 2016 11:15 AM EDT | Last Updated: July 23, 2016

Peter Tyrrell and Marcus Savage of Kenya are competing in the 2016 'Yukon 1000' canoe and kayak race, to raise money for elephant and rhino conservation efforts back home in Africa. (Mike Rudyk/Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

Marcus Savage and Peter Tyrrell, avid paddlers and campers back home in Kenya, are used to living and travelling in wild places, among wild animals.

"We're fine with lions or elephants, hyena, hippo — we know how to deal with them," said Tyrell, in Whitehorse earlier this week.

"The problem for us is, we've never really encountered bears. We don't have anything similar back home!"

Tyrrell and Savage were most concerned about losing their precious food to bears, somewhere along the route of the "Yukon 1000" — a 1,600 kilometre biennial canoe and kayak race they're competing in this week.

Savage said he was inspired to enter the race by friends who had run a marathon to raise money for an anti-poaching charity. 'Kind of made me think, well, I guess I can do it as well.' (Mike Rudyk/CBC)

The race began Monday morning in Whitehorse, with seven ambitious teams setting off down river towards the Dalton Bridge — where the Yukon River meets the Alaska pipeline — in Alaska. The race typically takes paddlers anywhere from seven to 12 days to complete, with a mandatory six hour stop each night.

Savage said he was inspired to enter by some friends who ran a marathon last year in the Sahara Desert. The friends were raising money for Running for Rangers, a charity to help rangers protect elephants and rhinos in Africa.

Savage and Tyrrell decided they could do something similar, but paddling instead of running.

"At the moment in Kenya, we've got a really big poaching crisis," Tyrrell said. "We're losing scores and scores of elephants, hundreds of elephants a year, and scores of rhinos a year."

In April, Kenyan authorities made a bold statement about illegal poaching by setting fire to more than 100 tonnes of elephant ivory and rhino horn. (Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

The charity aims to "help better equip [rangers] so they can do their job better, and boost their morale."

As Monday's start time approached, the two friends admitted that they weren't quite sure what they'd gotten themselves into. Their biggest challenge in preparing was figuring out how to pack for long, grueling days of remote Northern travel.

They need fuel, Tyrrell said — "enough food, the right type of food, and food that will fit in our boat and last long enough. So we've been struggling a little bit to get that sorted."

Warm clothes have been less of a concern; they brought plenty.

"I did prepare almost for winter," Savage said.

"It's actually much warmer and more pleasant that I thought it would be!"