"At nearly 3.5-metres tall and weighing as much as a bus, you could be forgiven for assuming that Goshi one of an estimated 30 super-tusker elephants left in Africa would be easy to find. The radio tracker picking up his signal beeps encouragingly, indicating the giant bull is within 200 metres. But the dry season has turned the mass of arid acacia scrubland grey, and everything seems to resemble an elephant. Even when they are invisible, the huge herbivores shape the landscape here."
"About 100 metres away, the Chinese-built SGR railway bisects the Tsavo area. A corridor marker in Oldonyiro. The village sits at the heart of a key passageway for hundreds of African savannah elephants in northern Kenya Some of the elephants will brave the railway's underpasses but others are scared off by the traffic and noise. During seasonal migrations, hundreds gather at bottlenecks and blocked routes."
Giant bulls like Goshi roam the Tsavo region, where 17,000 elephants follow seasonal rains across vast ranges. Migration corridors cross arid acacia scrubland and concentrate at key bottlenecks near villages such as Oldonyiro. Infrastructure including pylons, the Mombasa‑Nairobi highway, and the Chinese‑built SGR railway already bisect the landscape, and proposed road expansions threaten to sever routes permanently. Electric fences, new roads, railways and growing settlements are fragmenting access to food and water and forcing competition with people for resources. Researchers observe similar patterns emerging across African elephant rangelands as development advances.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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