By Hillary Rosner
It was just a week into 2024. January usually marks the start of the dry season, yet the rains lingered, turning Samburu National Reserve into a carpet of green.
As our vehicle crossed the boundary, elephants appeared – herds of mothers, calves, and mighty bulls moving lazily through the wet grass, dusting themselves, splashing in puddles, feeding under acacia shade. They were close enough that I could see the wrinkles on their trunks.
These were good days in Samburu after years of hardship. Between 2021 and 2023, the region had endured a brutal drought. More than 1,200 elephants perished across Samburu and Laikipia, many from hunger and thirst, others killed as they raided fields and pastures in desperation. Now, with the rains’ return, the elephants were thriving again.
Across the Ewaso Ng’iro River stood a small camp where scientists from Save the Elephants (STE) have studied these giants since 1997. From sketches of ears to digital databases, they know more than 600 elephants by sight and family groups like the Flowers, Royals, and Hawaiian Islands. Dozens of used GPS collars hang like museum relics outside the camp, symbols of nearly three decades of research mapping elephant movement.
The man behind this remarkable legacy is Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a Scottish zoologist who has devoted his life to elephants since the 1960s. Like Jane Goodall with chimpanzees, he opened a window into their social lives and intelligence, helping the world see them not just as wildlife but as a society. His early aerial surveys revealed the vastness of their migrations and the importance of corridors, which are lifelines connecting their habitats. Later, he pioneered GPS tracking, creating the first digital maps of elephant highways across Africa.
But those ancient pathways are disappearing. Roads, railways, towns, and fences now slice through the landscape, blocking elephant movement and sparking conflict with humans. In Kenya today, such conflict has become the leading cause of elephant deaths, ironically, just as herds were recovering from decades of poaching.
When I visited Samburu, the grass was still lush, but everyone knew it wouldn’t last. As waterholes dried, elephants would again set off on their long march toward Laikipia, following generations-old routes through valleys and escarpments. One of those bottlenecks lies near Oldonyiro, a settlement that has become the heart of a new conservation battle.
To understand what’s at stake, I traveled there with Benjamin Loloju, a soft-spoken Samburu man who grew up herding goats in the area. The son of pastoralists and one of eleven children, he was the only one to attend school, his education sponsored by an “elephant scholarship” from Save the Elephants. It’s a program that helps children from communities living alongside elephants pursue higher learning.
Loloju’s story is one of transformation: from a barefoot herder to a university graduate with a master’s degree in geospatial engineering from the UK. Now in his thirties, he had returned home to help map and protect the very corridors elephants rely on for survival.
We drove for hours across open plains and acacia-dotted hills. Occasionally, we passed herders, children fetching water, or tiny settlements made of wood and thatch. Mostly, there was space – wide, wild, and unbroken.
Then, in the middle of nowhere, Loloju stopped and pointed at a concrete post. “Livestock + Wildlife Corridor,” it read. It marked one of more than 200 routes officially mapped and agreed upon by local communities with the help of STE and the Wyss Academy for Nature. These markers guide future development so elephants and herders can continue to move freely.
But Oldonyiro, he said, was “the hardest case.” It sits exactly where the elephants must pass, yet it’s rapidly expanding. “This is the heart of it,” he told me. “If we close off here, we will cut off all movement for their survival, because this connection is everything.”
Maps from elephant collars show it clearly. In most of Samburu, the animals’ routes appear as wide red tangles showing areas where they rest, feed, and play. But near Oldonyiro, those lines narrow into a single strand, a hurried dash through danger. The same spot now pulses with yellow dots representing human settlements. The two collide precisely in the center of town.
When Loloju was a boy, Oldonyiro was little more than a cluster of huts. Now, one-story concrete buildings line both sides of the dusty road – shops, butcheries, phone kiosks stretching – ever farther toward the corridor. “Everything is new,” he said, shaking his head. “Soon, it will reach where I live.”
Barred from their ancestral path, elephants have begun forging a new route south of town. But even that, Loloju worries, may soon vanish. Two years earlier, the county converted communal land into private titles. People began fencing their plots, claiming their piece of modern Kenya. “These elephants will come and say, ‘My God, this fence was not here a month ago,’” he sighed.
We stopped where the new route crosses the road. Elephant dung dotted the ground. “This is someone’s plot,” he said quietly. “In a few years, it will be built up.”
Across the road, a new homestead already stood behind a six-foot fence. Elephants had knocked down a section trying to pass, and the owner had hastily patched it with thorny branches. “We’re talking to him,” said Loloju, “trying to convince people to leave at least thirty meters open for wildlife.”
Even if they succeed, nature itself poses another threat. Massive erosion gullies, some large enough to swallow a vehicle, have begun scarring the land. Overgrazing, drought, and violent rains carve deep wounds into the soil, fragmenting both human and animal movement. We picked our way around them, trying to follow the elephants’ footprints. “It starts as a little path,” he said. “And over the years, it just expands.”
I thought of the elephants I had seen in Samburu, with their calm confidence, the tender nudge of a mother’s trunk, the playfulness of young calves. Those very animals would soon arrive here, seeking passage. But between them and safety lay fences, eroding earth, and a growing town.
Kenya stands at a crossroads: one road leading toward prosperity, another toward ecological loss. Under Vision 2030, the nation is racing to modernize by building roads, railways, and cities. But without foresight, that progress could cut off the country’s oldest travelers.
For now, the elephants adapt. They learn new routes, dodge new obstacles. Yet their survival depends on whether people like Loloju can keep those pathways open. “I think maybe we were late for Oldonyiro,” he admitted as the sun dipped behind the hills. “We should have come ten years earlier. But now is the time.”
The article has been republished from Mongabay: https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/migrating-elephants-get-room-to-roam-via-community-conservation-efforts/
