Kenya's ‘supertusker' elephants are in danger – here's why we must save them

Telegraph

10-05-2025

It had been raining almost solidly, with flooding making it tricky to track game; instead of elephants thirstily congregating around water-holes they had dispersed across the lush landscape. I was on a mission, one that smacked disturbingly of trophy hunters; I was searching for 'supertuskers', to use hunter terminology: elephants whose tusks are each greater than 100 pounds in weight.
It came down to my last day. Amboseli National Park, where I had focused my search, had closed for the evening. However, that didn't shut down all my options: elephants are free to wander in and out of the fence-less park.
I had been told to locate someone called David Moipei from the local community. He tracks and thereby safeguards various bull elephants, including Craig, Kenya's biggest tusker. David met me on the road and clambered into my vehicle, pointing us towards thick bush and soft ground, our tyres spinning in the mud. In the failing light, we caught sight of two individual bulls, Connor and Townsend, and then we spotted Craig.
We watched him uprooting vegetation, twisting it round his trunk, flicking the roots to shake off the soil. Through my binoculars, I studied his mighty tusks, before he filled the lens, and I realised he was loping towards our open-sided vehicle. He came so close I could have reached out my hand and touched him. It was then I realised the true scale of this 53-year-old bull elephant.
Supertuskers could have been poached into extinction in southern Kenya. In times of hunting and heavy poaching, elephants with smaller tusks – and lesser ivory hauls – were the ones who survived and passed on their genetic code, giving rise to herds with significantly smaller tusks. A tuskless trait even became prevalent, as females born without tusks were more likely to survive and reproduce. Scientists observed that males conceived with this same tuskless trait were more likely to be miscarried in pregnancy, evidenced by higher numbers of females in the population.
This fast-track natural selection means that there are few supertuskers left roaming the savannah. Scientists at Tsavo Trust estimate that there are about 10 in Tsavo East National Park. At Amboseli National Park, a representative of a local NGO called Big Life Foundation told me there were probably 'nine to 11' supertuskers. The uncertainty is down to the fact elephants have vast home ranges and migrate tens of thousands of kilometres.
The consensus is there are probably only a few dozen supertuskers left in total, in a region once known for some of the largest herds on the African continent. That number is being dented by trophy hunting happening legally in neighbouring Tanzania, which has issued permits for five supertuskers to be shot in the greater Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles the border. Until a few months ago, Tanzania had agreed not to target elephants in this area. Since my visit, two supertuskers have been killed here.
While Kenya bans trophy hunting, there are other threats, including from farmers. When I visited Big Life's headquarters east of Amboseli, I studied their whiteboards documenting elephant incidents, written in red for poaching and in green for crop raiding. The entries from 2011 are a sea of red, with the ivory 'not recovered'. Four years later, after robust anti-poaching efforts, human-wildlife conflict became the lead cause of death for elephants.
A wave of new farms is fanning across Kenya to feed the country's growing human population, altering the landscape and disrupting elephants' traditional migration routes. When the animals raid fields, farmers chase them off using spears, sometimes with poisoned tips, which can lodge in their hides, causing a death that is drawn out over days. Again, it is the supertuskers who are most vulnerable because they're the oldest elephants, on their sixth and final set of teeth, who prefer cultivated tomatoes and other soft crops over tougher natural grasses. It wasn't a coincidence that I found Craig and other senior bull elephants out of the park near farmland.
What might yet save the supertuskers are tourists, many of whom covet seeing a bull elephant in the wild. I saw elephants, including one female, with tusks so long they grazed the ground, so massive in girth they rested them on branches to support the weight. It is income from tourism which is helping find solutions, including schemes to maintain wild open landscapes amongst the furrowed agricultural fields and rows of greenhouses.
Land leasing is Big Life's new focus: paying local Maasai communities an annual fee in exchange for keeping the land largely natural, free of fences, and not sold off in parcels to farmers. Hundreds of families have joined the scheme, earning revenue while continuing to use their land for grazing cattle. They set aside some for mixed use, where their cows shares the land with game; other tracts are allocated for wildlife and tourism only.
Daniel Kutata, a 33 year-old ranger with Big Life, told me: 'Many in the community like land leasing because they are earning money instead of the land being idle. We don't sell our land and the next generation benefits. It's a win for all. It also brings a positive mind to conservation. We only have one prayer: that there are people always funding this land, otherwise the habitat will shrink and everything will collapse.'
The situation does feel fragile. Although this sweep of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania is still functionally connected from Tsavo to the Maasai Mara, this has mostly been achieved by electric fencing to create wiggly wildlife corridors, which can narrow to a pinch point. At Kimana, elephants and other migratory wildlife are funnelled towards a designated crossing at a busy highway, which is only 85m wide and heavy with traffic. It's perilous to watch, but these are extreme measures for extreme times.
'Elephants don't have space anymore,' said Katito Sayialel at Amboseli Trust. 'Their home ranges are blocked because people are dividing up the land, building homes and farms. It's a big challenge, we just need to have a better balance.'
What can tourists do? We can choose operators affiliated with organisations like Big Life, such as Angama Amboseli, a pioneering lodge in Kimana, which leases land from the local community, pays for anti-poaching efforts, maintains fences and provides community support.
Christine Mwende of Tsavo Trust said the future has to focus on human-wildlife coexistence: 'Locals need to see the trickle-down benefits, not only wildlife preying on their livestock and trampling on their crops. They need school bursaries, clinics, provision of electric fences, and training programmes for women to enter the workforce in enterprising ways.'
Another ambitious idea includes the sponsoring of land by corporates. Alex Walker of Serian camps, on the north side of the Maasai Mara, hopes big companies might one day step in to help conserve the land bordering the national parks. 'We need these kinds of big injections of cash to make the sums add up,' he said.
Such projects might sound too worthy to be part of a holiday, but they give valuable context to a safari trip. Otherwise, visitors might well be puzzled to see cows grazing next to zebra and hear that hailed as a success. But as Craig Millar of Big Life says, 'This is the new wilderness.'
Essentials
Michelle was a guest of Natural World Safaris (01273 691642) which offers tailor-made cultural and wildlife journeys in Kenya. A seven-night itinerary exploring Tsavo East and Amboseli National Parks, and the Kimana Sanctuary, from £9,800 per person, based on two sharing, including accommodation, meals, guided safaris, conservation and park fees, airport transfers, longer-distance road transfers and domestic flights.