The Elephants
The Royals. The Storms. The Acacias and the Artists. The Spice Girls, Turks and First Ladies. These are some of the 66 families of elephants that live in Samburu National Reserve and its surrounding ecosystem that we've known since 1997.
If the rains are good during the Monsoon season, 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 to Save The Elephants (STE), a research and conservation charity founded by Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton in 1993, whose research station is located seven kilometres downstream from us.
An extended partnership between our guides and the STE field researchers means that we're kept up to date on all new elephant births, matings or changes in family structure, and we contribute in turn to their longterm database - as useful extra eyes and ears in the field - reporting any interesting elephant associations, long distance movement or behaviour.
Meeting elephants as "persons" is entirely different from what you might have done before and it's our special focus at Elephant Watch Camp, spring-boarding off the 30 year study of this known population by Save The Elephants.
Over the years we've witnessed the challenges they've faced and seen how each individual rises to meet the trials and triumphs of life with guts, wits and determination.
As well as the many families of related females and their young living in Samburu, there are also about 200 adult bulls that range across the ecosystem.
Their mission is to bulk up during the rains and reach peak condition when they come into musth - a period of heightened sexuality and aggression that gives them an advantage over potential rivals competing for the same fertile females.
With larger tusks in general, mature bull elephants are more often targeted by ivory poachers and killed. They're also more likely to take bigger risks stealing into farms at night to crop raid. Unfortunately, this puts them in the firing line of angry villagers who can lose an entire year's harvest to elephants in one night.
Many of Samburu's most splendid bulls have been lost over the years in incidents of conflict like this, and it's broken our hearts each time.
​Thanks to the sterling efforts of Save The Elephants and a dedicated global alliance of conservationists, the ivory trade is currently in retreat. So the main challenges now facing elephants are habitat loss and conflict with people.
Creating permanent wildlife corridors that link protected areas can ensure that elephants have enough space to roam as they've have through millennia. But this must be paired with effective, practical solutions that turn conflict into peaceful co-existence with people. This is a critical focus for Save The Elephants.
It's also an area in which conservation-led tourism can play a catalytic role, bringing elephant lovers from around the world to meet Samburu's elephants and their nomadic ambassadors, empowering people to champion the natural world and join hands to support effective conservation efforts.
