The Elephants
The Royals. The Storms. The Acacias and the Artists. The Spice Girls, Turks and First Ladies. These are some of the names by which we have come to know many of the 66 families of elephants that live in Samburu National Reserve and its surrounding ecosystem. Depending on the rains elsewhere, these 500 or so individuals can be joined by as many as 500 more. This makes Samburu one of the finest areas on earth to see these majestic and threatened animals in their natural habitats.
Elephant Watch Camp is closely connected with Save The Elephants, the conservation and research charity based downstream from us, founded by Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton. The long and unique engagement between our guides and their researchers means that we are kept up to date with all new births, matings or changes in the families, and contribute in turn to their longterm database as useful extra eyes in the field taking notes on interesting elephant associations and behaviour.
Meeting elephants as "persons" is entirely different from anything you might have done before. Each individual has its own name and unique personality. Over the years we've witnessed the challenges each elephant has faced and how they've risen to meet the trials and triumphs of life with wits, guts and determination.
As well as the families – headed by a single matriarch and consisting of other related females and their young – there are about 200 adult bulls who roam through the Samburu ecosystem. Their main mission is to bulk up their condition so that they can take on rivals when they start looking for mates during the rains.
With their larger ivory, unfortunately, mature bulls are more often targeted by ivory poachers. They also tend to risk detours into farmers’ fields to steal crops, putting them in the firing line of angry villagers who can lose a year’s harvest in one night of elephant crop raiding. Together, these factors mean we have lost many of our most splendid bulls over the years.
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But thanks to the sterling efforts of Save The Elephants and a dedicated global alliance of conservationists, for now the ivory trade is in retreat. Moving forward, our greatest challenge is tackling human-elephant conflict, by gazetting corridors to ensure elephants have the space to roam as they've done through millennia, and finding practical solutions that lead to peaceful co-existence with people in a landscape that's rapidly changing.
