Stories

The grim reality of human-elephant conflict in northern Kenya

With elephant poaching reducing across much of Africa, elephant populations are starting to recover and expand their range. Sadly, this often means they come into conflict with humans. In northern Kenya, a series of recent elephant deaths has...

Counting to Conserve

How to survey wildlife from the air In June, myself and Save the Elephants’ aviation co-ordinator, Paul Kokiro, flew the organisation’s Cessna 206 aircraft for ten days in support of the Kenyan government’s national wildlife census –...

Poachers Turn Wildlife Defenders in the DRC

Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to a population of just over 700 forest elephants.In 1970, the Democratic Republic of Congo was home to nearly 300,000 forest elephants. Today there are perhaps fewer than 10,000 ...

The Hidden Elephants

Understanding the magnificent, intelligent, and highly endangered forest elephantWhenever African elephants are mentioned, it is understandably the savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) that receives all the headlines. Ask any child in the world...

Empowering young girls in northern Kenya

In Samburu, northern Kenya, menstruation amongst adolescent girls is an expensive affair which many cannot afford. Lack of money for sanitary towels means that some girls still resort to unhygienic and ineffective cultural practices. During their...

Young wild mother elephant gunned down in the north

A young orphaned elephant who survived the horror of her mother being killed by poachers and eventually gave birth to two calves of her own, has tragically been found dead in northern Kenya.  Shafaa (aged 21) was one of eight elephants reported to...

Counting Elephants: Modern vs. Traditional Survey Methods

The idea of using satellites to count elephants has hit the news again. Unfortunately simple barriers - trees and clouds - stand in the way of getting accurate estimates of elephant numbers from space. Counting elephants and other large animals...

First hand account of vehicle attack by raging musth bull

There's an African proverb that goes...' when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers'. In May 2002, it was more than the grass that suffered after a bull named Rommel redirected his aggression towards one of our research vehicles in...