For many children in the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem, getting an education starts with simply getting to school.

That can mean walking upward of 15-kilometers,

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.

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

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