Protecting wildlife starts with taking care of the people who protect it.

Across the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem, Big Life’s rangers work from 33 strategically positioned outposts.

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Aerial patrols in an ultralight plane like our Super Cub are one of the best ways to monitor the vast, remote corners of the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem.

The Cub’s-eye view allows us to understand seasonal livestock and wildlife movements, spot suspicious activity like charcoal kilns, poaching camps, and illegal land development, and facilitate large operations like wildlife collaring or translocations.

On a recent patrol over Mbirikani ranch, Craig Millar, pilot and Big Life’s Chief Operating Officer, spotted a herd of around thirty elephants, including three of the four elephants we collared back in 2025.

We estimate there to be around 80 elephants living on Mbirikani. They spend most of their time in the lava forests and thick acacia bushland, getting their water from community boreholes in the dead of night. They are skittish and prone to taking off quickly when approached by people, the opposite of the relaxed, tourist-tolerant herds found in Amboseli.

That’s why being able to keep an eye on them from the sky is so useful.

In the little more than one year of tracking data we’ve gathered, one male travelled down into Tsavo West, but for the most part, these elephants live almost entirely outside of protected areas playing a constant game of chess moving around humans and livestock herds, and both sides coexist with remarkably little conflict.

The more we understand how these elephants use the landscape, the better equipped we are to protect them and the communities they live alongside. Thanks to this data we have gained invaluable insights, which will better inform our ranger activities and habitat protection efforts.

📸: Joshua Clay

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Flying a Super Cub aircraft might be the most fun anyone can have off the ground, but 10 hours and 700 miles in a small cockpit can take the shine off of it a little. Ask Craig Millar, Big Life’s Chief Operations Officer, who just joined an elephant conservation super-team on a big mission.

Planned and led by our partners at the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), the objective was to put satellite tracking collars on seven female elephants. With over 50 years of elephant monitoring in Amboseli, ATE has the most extraordinary understanding of this incredible elephant population, but advancing technology continues to open new ways of learning.

The elephants were chosen from specific family groups, based on interest in their movements on community-owned land outside of Amboseli National Park. This data provides a detailed understanding elephant family ranging behavior, critical for identifying and motivating for the creation of community-protected areas.

Big Life was very happy to provide aerial support during the 3-day operation - finding the right family groups and guiding ground teams to them - working with teams from ATE, Kenya Wildlife Service, Kenya Wildlife Research and Training Institute, Save the Elephants, and Tsavo Trust.

This is the power of working together, and there is nothing we enjoy more.

📸: Ranger Daniel Kutata

When people can’t get to the hospital, you bring the hospital to them.

Across Big Life’s area of operation, many remote Maasai communities lack access to basic healthcare services. Expecting people to care about wildlife conservation isn’t realistic if we don’t care about them in return.

In May, a male lion named Lemurt was speared after entering a livestock enclosure near the Nairrabala Conservancy.

The local community alerted our partners at Lion Guardians, who contacted the Kenya Wildlife Service veterinary team. Lemurt was treated the following day. Despite the severity of his wounds, no major arteries or bones had been damaged, and his prognosis was good.

That’s where our rangers came in.

For the next two weeks, Big Life’s Nairrabala rangers monitored Lemurt every day, sharing photos and video with Big Life, Lion Guardians, and the KWS veterinary team so that his recovery could be closely followed. By June 1, his wounds had healed well enough that daily monitoring was no longer needed.

And recently, we got the update everyone was hoping for: Lemurt was photographed as seen here healthy, successfully hunting, and with his pride—which includes three new cubs.

Conservation successes like this rarely belong to any one organization. They depend on communities sharing information, conservation partners coordinating their response, veterinary teams providing expert care, and rangers maintaining a watchful presence on the ground.

We’re grateful to Kingspan (whose lion logo feels particularly fitting for this story!) for supporting Big Life’s Nairrabala ranger unit through its Planet Passionate program. Their partnership helps keep rangers in the field, contributing to the network of people working together to give wildlife like Lemurt a future.

Sometimes protecting lions really does take a pride. 

📸: Joshua Clay

A new short film from Big Life explores what community-led conservation has made possible, and what it will take to protect the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem for generations to come.

For decades, Big Life has worked alongside local Maasai communities to protect one of the world’s most extraordinary landscapes.

Spanning nearly two million acres in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem is home to some of East Africa’s most iconic wildlife, including one of the continent’s most important elephant populations and some of its last great tuskers. It is also a living landscape, shared by wildlife and the communities who have called it home for generations.

Our new five-minute film, Amboseli Forever, tells the story of this place, the people working to protect it, and what decades of partnership have made possible.

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Today, more than 600 Big Life rangers, field staff, nurses, educators, and local experts work collaboratively across the ecosystem. Together with local communities and conservation partners, they have helped drastically reduce poaching and human-wildlife conflict, expanded access to education and healthcare, and built a powerful community-led network of nature protection.

But the future of Amboseli depends on more than protecting individual animals.

As pressures on this landscape grow, securing and connecting habitat is increasingly critical. Elephants and other wildlife need room to move. Communities need healthy rangelands that can continue to support people and livestock. And the connections between Amboseli’s protected areas must remain open if this ecosystem is to continue functioning as it has for generations.

Amboseli Forever is both a celebration of what has been achieved and a reminder of what is at stake.

The film was created with acclaimed wildlife cinematographer Toby Strong, a 2026 Emmy Award winner for cinematography, whose extraordinary imagery captures the scale, beauty, and life of Amboseli.

We hope you’ll take five minutes to watch and then share Amboseli Forever with someone who should know this remarkable place and the people working to protect its future.

Conservation succeeds when communities lead.