Amboseli Elephant research Camp in Amboseli National Park is a great site Kenya safari offering the visitors of the park with the most amazing opportunity to learn more about elephants, it was established in 1972 and since then the elephants in Amboseli National park have been identified in their population and data regarding to their births, deaths and the behavior has been collected. This made Amboseli Elephant Research Project which resulted in the establishment of the Elephant Research Camp to be a critical source of the baseline data on the elephants.
Elephant Research Project is a long-term research project on the ethology of the African Elephant, operated by the nonprofit Amboseli Trust for the elephants, the project studies the elephant’s social behavior, age structure and the population dynamics. It’s the longest running study of elephant behavior in the wild, and has gathered data on life histories and association patterns for more than 2000 individual elephants.
The project was mainly established to ensure the long-term conservation and welfare of the Africa’s elephants in the context of human needs and pressures through scientist research, training, community outreach, public awareness and advocacy.
The research project was initiated in 1972, by Cynthia Moss and Harvey Croze in Amboseli National Park in the south of Kenya she teamed up with Harvey Croze and in 1972 started the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, relatively few poachers have been active in Amboseli Park’s approximately 390 km2 area, this is especially due to the Maasai people, and the constant presence of tourists and researchers. Thus, Amboseli is one of few regions in Africa where the age structure of the elephants has remained undistorted. The area is monitored by the game wardens and scientists throughout the year. The subjects of the Amboseli Elephant research Project, mostly notably the elephant matriarch Echo, have been described at length in the documentaries on PBS and the animal planet.
The elephants of Amboseli are among the most studied in the world, all the thanks goes to the work of Dr.Cynthia Moss, whose books include The Amboseli Elephants and Elephant Memories, she was also behind the famous documentary DVD Echo of the elephants, the research camp remains in operation in the heart of Amboseli National Park, under the guidance of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.
Although the camp is not open for the casual visits, it is possible, with prior arrangement, to arrange a one hour lecture at the camp, during which the researchers explain their work and other related issues of the elephant conservation, with time for questions at the end. The Kenya safari does not come cheap. But this is one of the mother lodes for elephant research in Africa and a safari here is a rare opportunity to learn more about these soulful creatures.
The elephant monitoring and research, the project also provides the training on the elephant ecology and monitoring for the range country biologists and the conservation managers; conducts awareness raising meetings with schools and funds scholarships for school and university students interested in the conservation management courses, it is also manages a consolation scheme through which people who have suffered from the human-elephant conflict resulting in the livestock losses outside of the protected areas are given some monetary support, there were 12 such pay-ours in 2019, the project also attracts more tourists on a safari to the Amboseli ecosystem, this holistic, ecosystem-wide effort, within a strong collaboration of the stakeholders, continues to ensure the safety and the survival of the elephants in the Amboseli National Park.
Amboseli Elephant Research Camp is so special and unusual in that it is a home to one of the few relatively undisturbed elephants made a comeback across must populations left in Africa, as poaching to fuel the illegal ivory trade has made a comeback across much of the rest of the continent, the Amboseli elephants have been largely spared.
