It must have been a terrible decision for the elephant family to make, leaving their baby behind.

The calf had fallen into a well while trying to drink and we can only assume that the rest of the herd tried through the night to rescue it, but the sides of the hole were just too steep and slippery. Eventually, the herd moved off, perhaps as humans and their livestock started to move around in the morning.

The lonely calf was found by representatives of Royal African Safaris while on a game drive in the Enduimet Wildlife Management Area, an area of northern Tanzania that forms part of the Greater Amboseli ecosystem.

They managed to get a message out and one of the Big Life-funded rapid-response ranger units was quickly on the scene. Everyone worked together to get a cable looped around the poor young elephant, which was pulled out of the muddy pit by a vehicle winch.

But by that point, no one knew where the elephant’s family had moved on to. Luckily, the calf picked up the scent of its family and set off in hot pursuit. To everyone’s delight, the family had only gone a few kilometers and the calf was able to track them down for a happy reunion between mother and baby.

As the drought gets worse, animals will be forced to look for water from risky sources, including man-made livestock watering wells such as in this case. We know that this won’t be the last elephant that gets into trouble in the coming months, but thanks to our friends at RAS and the Enduimet Wildlife Management Area rangers, we’re relieved that this particular story has a happy ending.

They say that talk is cheap, but it's certainly a start.

This past week thousands of delegates from across Africa were in the Rwandan capital of Kigali for the first IUCN Africa Protected Area Congress, which aimed to come up with strategies to halt the rapid decline of wildlife species and habitats in Africa’s protected areas.

While many are (rightly) calling for greater investment in Africa’s neglected formal protected areas, the reality is that many of these national parks and reserves will not survive as islands. Amboseli National Park is one of these; a small part of a much larger ecosystem that lives or dies as one.

Conservation success in these large-scale systems depends on the actions of the human communities who live within them, often sharing space with wildlife, so we welcome the increased focus on community participation at big international events such as this.

We are even happier to have had three Big Life staff members at the conference, (from left in the photo) Big Life’s CEO Benson Leyian, Ranger section commander Daniel Popote (who won an IUCN International Ranger Award on Wednesday), and Predator Protection Program coordinator Daniel Sambu.

These staff members represented not just Big Life but their Maasai communities, as well as our partners, World Land Trust, IUCN, and the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, who supported their attendance.

We are rushing towards an extremely uncomfortable and uncertain future as a species, and we really only have one lifeboat. That lifeboat is called NATURE, and Africa has an opportunity to lead the way in keeping her afloat. We’re working to do just that here in Amboseli, and hope that this conference will galvanize similar action across the continent.

Photo thanks to our partners at Conservation Alliance of Kenya, represented at the conference by Dr. Winnie Kiiru who is also pictured here.

We are exceptionally proud to announce that Big Life Foundation’s Daniel Popote is one of twelve winners of the IUCN International Ranger Award, presented at a ceremony held in Rwanda yesterday. Popote was selected from over 100 global nominations, and is one of the first Kenyans to receive the award.

Popote has spent 19 years patrolling and protecting the Kimana Sanctuary, leading teams through difficult missions and putting his own life at risk by ambushing poachers and responding to human-wildlife conflict scenarios.

As a teenager Popote tended to his father’s cows near Amboseli National Park and he would talk to Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) rangers about the animals there. He admired them for the work they did to protect wildlife but was unsure whether he could ever get a job at KWS because he didn’t have a formal education.

In 2003, tourism company African Safari Club (ASC) was hiring rangers from Popote’s community and he put an application in. His obvious enthusiasm, understanding of bushcraft and animal behavior, and desire to help his community got him the job, and he was stationed in the Kimana Sanctuary.

When the ASC later fell on hard times, Popote found himself without a salary. But he was so passionate about protecting the land and wildlife that he spent over a year without an income, selling his livestock to sustain himself. During that time he led a small group of rangers on foot patrols to ensure Kimana Sanctuary was not overrun by poaching and overgrazing.

When Big Life took over management of Kimana Sanctuary in 2018, Big Life’s co-founder, Richard Bonham, saw in Popote the Sanctuary’s most capable guardian and hired him to spearhead the ranger units working there. Today, Popote leads a team of 37 rangers and has rightly earned the respect of his community and colleagues. He has also inspired many young people by demonstrating that a lack of formal education should not hinder those who have a passion for wildlife.

Photo: Josh Clay

There is a Big Life ranger with an unusual distinction. His name is Sergeant Sinkoi Kanchori, and he has caught the same poacher three different times.

The first time, Sinkoi and his team had discovered a snare in the Chyulu Hills. They decided to wait for the poacher to come back to check it, and so set up an ambush. Eventually a man appeared, moving toward them clutching a bow and arrows. He walked right into the rangers, and was arrested and taken to the police station, where he was then jailed.

A year later, Sinkoi and his men were on patrol in a similar area when they heard two men talking ahead. He ordered his men to hide as they waited to see who was coming. As the men approached, carrying two pangas and a bow; he was shocked to recognize the poacher they had arrested the year before. When they got close, Sinkoi made the call to chase them. In the scramble one poacher was caught, but the previous offender narrowly escaped.

On the third occasion, Sinkoi and his team had once again found snares, and were setting up an ambush with rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). While doing so a herd of eland came cantering towards them, visibly startled. Sinkoi knew instinctively what was chasing them and told his men to lie flat. After the eland passed, they saw two men approaching at a jog, backs hunched, arrows drawn, ready to strike. On Sinkoi’s call, the six rangers gave chase. Despite being 52-years-old and carrying a heavy shotgun, Sinkoi sprinted ahead and managed to catch his rival, but not without suffering a minor wrist fracture in the scuffle.

Upon further interrogation by Big Life and KWS, the poacher commented that if their roles were switched and he were to become a ranger, he would wish to arrest “that mzee (old man),” pointing at Sinkoi.

Asked why, he said, “Because we have had three encounters: he has arrested me twice and I only narrowly escaped on the other. This man is too good at his job! If he was a poacher, he would be the best, so I would be sure to arrest him first!”

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