The first time I saw Craig, he took my breath away.

He’s an awe-inspiring presence—one of the last remaining great tuskers of East Africa. Towering above the savannah with tusks that sweep the ground and a deep, subsonic rumble that resonates across the plains, Craig is a living relic of another era.

Each of his tusks weighs more than 100 pounds. Only around 25 elephants like him remain in all of East Africa. Ten of them call Big Life’s area of operation home.

Craig has survived for more than 50 years—through drought, shifting landscapes, and the brutal legacy of ivory poaching. Today, he shares his home with nearly 200,000 people. And like all elephants, Craig must migrate across vast distances to survive. But the paths he once roamed freely now cross highways, farms, and densely populated areas.

That’s where Big Life comes in.

Across the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, Big Life’s 400+ community rangers are working every day to protect elephants like Craig. Their efforts include preventing poaching, mitigating human-elephant conflict, and keeping vital migration corridors open and secure.

One of those critical pathways is the Kimana Corridor—a narrow but essential strip of land connecting Amboseli National Park to Kimana Sanctuary and beyond. This corridor allows elephants and other wildlife to move safely between protected areas. Without it, Craig and countless others would be cut off from the resources they need to survive.

The corridor is just 46-meters-wide at its narrowest point. But it supports some of the most remarkable wildlife movements in the region. Since its creation, more than 85,000 wild animals have used the corridor—including giraffes, zebras, warthogs, and of course, elephants.

Big Life’s rangers are stationed throughout the corridor and the surrounding landscape. Their presence is a constant safeguard—not just against poachers, but also to reduce conflict between people and wildlife. And innovative solutions, like a solar-powered crop-protection fence, help keep both elephants and farmers safe.

Craig’s tusks aren’t the only thing that make him vulnerable. His habitat is at risk. Land across Greater Amboseli is being sold off and developed at an alarming rate. The open savannahs that Craig was born to roam are disappearing.

In partnership with local communities, Big Life is working to address this crisis—supporting land management, habitat protection, and sustainable livelihoods to ensure that conservation and community can thrive together.

Because elephants like Craig deserve more than survival—they deserve space, safety, and a future. You can help protect Craig and his habitat. A small gift helps fund the rangers, corridors, and community-led efforts that keep him safe. 

Craig Millar
COO, Big Life Kenya

Images top to bottom: Jeremy Goss, Joshua Clay, and Axel Fassio

Protecting the environment isn’t a choice — it’s a shared responsibility.

Thriving ecosystems rely on the connections and relationships between all of the living beings within them.

Disrupt enough of these connections, and the whole system can weaken. This is sadly what we are witnessing all over the world.

At Big Life, our goal is to protect the Greater Amboseli ecosystem, to ensure it’s innumerable interlocking parts can continue their intricate dance far into the future. Protecting the ecosystem’s 2+ million acres cannot be achieved through a single approach. Together with our partners, we operate a diverse range of programs: from antipoaching to education, conservancy creation to healthcare, and so much more.

In some ways, our programs mirror an ecosystem - many different people and parts working together for the benefit of the whole: Amboseli.

So while it may not seem like awarding a scholarship or offering free health checkups could directly result in a thriving herd of elephants, one must rethink how healthy ecosystem’s work. A healthy community IS a healthy environment. And a healthy environment is a thriving Amboseli for us all to enjoy, human and animal alike.

Learn more about our work protecting habitat. 

📽: Jeremy Goss

Zebras are tough. Watch any nature documentary they’re featured in, and you’ll see the many challenges they have evolved to overcome.

But what they haven’t evolved to deal with are fences, snares, and busy roads. These threats are particularly damaging to Amboseli’s zebras who must roam vast distances for food across a landscape marked with increasing human development.

This zebra was photographed in March 2023 at the end of one of Amboseli’s worst droughts on record, bearing a horrific snare wound around its neck. Big Life rangers monitored it until nightfall, but it disappeared before a vet was available to treat it, along with our hopes of its survival.

Miraculously, the same zebra was seen again just this past week, its wound fully healed. We are stunned to see it healthy again more than two years later.

Our efforts at creating new wildlife conservancies and corridors in conjunction with our anti-poaching operations, are all attempts at mitigating the negative impacts that humans place on Amboseli’s wildlife.

This plucky zebra is a reminder that nature is exceptionally resilient, and that our efforts are not in vain.  

📸: Joshua Clay

Three men sat waiting next to a motorbike at a petrol station in late evening.

The location was Bisil, a town in the center of Maasailand that would be hosting one of Kenya’s busiest livestock markets the following morning.

Just 60 km from Tanzania on the Namanga Highway, the market attracts customers from across the border and beyond. It’s a place where many things move through many hands.

The three men were not here to sell cows or goats - their cargo was far more secretive. They had been careful, but even the most quietly spoken whispers are clearly audible to Big Life’s intelligence network.

Whispers of these three had been monitored for several weeks, and they had no idea that the net was closing in.

Working with Big Life’s intelligence, officers from the Kenya Widlife Service arrested the men where they stood. The bag on their motorbike was opened to reveal 12 pieces of ivory, weighing 41.5 kgs in total. There was little struggle as they were taken for interrogation, and they will appear before court early next month.

We have not lost a single elephant to ivory poaching across our area of operation since 2018. But that doesn’t mean that the trade has stopped. In this case, the ivory was old, indicating it had been hidden for some time. But it underscores the need to stay vigilant.

This recent arrest sends a clear message to any would-be dealer: no matter how quietly you may whisper, you will be heard, and you will be caught.