Tsavo has always been classic elephant country and it was primarily for them that it became Kenya’s second national park in 1948. Here, it was hoped, the herds might wander freely and at peace. But in the Seventies and Eighties it became an elephant’s graveyard as poaching reduced their numbers from 44,000 to just 6,000. The worldwide ivory trade ban in 1989 brought a few years’ respite in which Tsavo’s elephant population has increased to about 12,000, but today the poachers are back with a vengeance and KWS is struggling to hold the line. In May last year, poachers killed Satao, one of Africa’s most revered elephants.
