Wider World by CS

Beloved African Elephant Killed for Ivory—"Monumental" Loss

Popular with tourists, Satao fell to poachers May 30, 2014, group says.

Satao drinks at a water hole in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya, in 2013, when the magnificent tusker was in his prime.

Photograph by Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, www.markdeeble.wordpress.com

Christine Dell'Amore

Published June 16, 2014

One of Kenya's most adored elephants, who had giant tusks and was known as Satao, has been killed for his ivory—a "monumental" loss, experts say.

Poachers shot the bull elephant with a poisoned arrow in Tsavo East National Park, waited for him to die a painful death, and hacked off his face to remove his ivory, according to the Tsavo Trust, an area nonprofit that works with wildlife and local communities.

Satao was particularly appealing to poachers as a tusker, a type of male elephant with a genetic makeup that produces unusually large tusks. His tusks were more than 6.5 feet (2 meters) long.

"Kenya as a country contains probably the last remaining big tuskers in the world," said Paula Kahumbu, a Kenya-based wildlife conservationist with the nonprofit WildlifeDirect.

"To lose an animal like Satao is a massive loss to Kenya. He was a major tourist attraction to that part of Tsavo," said Kahumbu, who was a 2011 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.

The elephant was killed May 30, but members of the trust announced his death on June 13, after verifying the carcass's identity.

"It is with enormous regret that we confirm there is no doubt that Satao is dead, killed by an ivory poacher's poisoned arrow to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for ivory in far-off countries," the Tsavo Trust said in a statement.

"A great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece."

Satao was killed by poachers and his face was hacked off in Tsavo East National Park in May 2014.

Photograph by Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, www.markdeeble.wordpress.com

"Massive and Hostile" Expanse

Satao died despite his high profile, which brought special protection.

"It's also a reflection on the situation in Kenya that even in a place where all efforts are made to protect the elephants, it's still very difficult to protect them," Kahumbu said.

For the past 18 months, the Tsavo Trust and the Kenya Wildlife Service have been monitoring Satao's movements by air and on foot. "When he was alive, his enormous tusks were easily identifiable, even from the air," according to the Tsavo Trust.

Satao generally kept to a predictably small area with four other bull elephants. But in search of food following big rains, he had recently moved into a boundary of the park that's a known poaching hot spot, especially for hunters with poisoned arrows.

Authorities noticed this and protection efforts were stepped up, but the area Satao entered "is a massive and hostile expanse for any single anti-poaching unit to cover, at least one thousand square kilometers [about 390 square miles] in size," according to the Tsavo Trust.

"Understaffed and with inadequate resources given the scale of the challenge, [Kenya Wildlife Service] ground units have a massive uphill struggle to protect wildlife in this area."