Amboseli National Park in Kenya

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Amboseli National Park


Typewild
Founded1968
Place Namanga
Country Kenya
Website Website
Related persons
Owner
Key People 1972-: Cynthia Moss (researcher)
Zoological department
Elephant department
Record history
History of updates2025-11-27: 2025-11-27: 2025-11-29:
Latest document update2025-11-29 11:20:58
Google map
Description

Amboseli National Park, in Namanga, Kenya , was founded in 1968.

Living elephants

At the Amboseli National Park lives 204 elephants with records in this database: (detail list)

Comments / picturesAmboseli National Park, formerly Maasai Amboseli Game Reserve is in Kajiado District, Rift Valley Province in Kenya. The park is 390 kmö (150 mi2) in size at the core of an 8,000 km2 (3,000 mi2) ecosystem that spreads across the Kenya-Tanzania border.

The park is famous for being the best place in Africa to get close to free-ranging elephants, and they have been the object for Research since 40 years, supervised by Cynthia Moss. The Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) also gives a general insight in the life for wild elephants, and among other things the Mortality of wild elephants during draughts, and a rapid increase during more rainy years, as citations from Cynthia Moss clearly show;
  • The rains failed in 1976 and as a result there was a terrible drought in Amboseli. Many elephants died that year particularly young ones [...] Of the 29 calves that were born to the whole population in 1976, 14 died before they were a year old. [...] More than half the calves born that year died.[...] Only two calves had been born to the Amboseli population between January 1977 and November 1978.
  • During the drought the females had stopped reproductive cycling altogether. However, as soon as conditions improved they began to come into oestrus again and mate. Since so few of them had young calves there were a lot of females ready to conceive. The result was a baby boom in 1979 and 1980.
  • In 1984 there was another serious drought and again many elephants died: 11 Adult females, 13 Adult males, three juveniles, 13 weanlings, five second-year calves, and 22 first-year calves.
  • 2009 everything changed dramatically for Amboseli including for the elephants, other wildlife, people and livestock. The area and much of Kenya experienced the worst drought in living memory. [...] Nearly 400 elephants died during 2009 including 250 calves. [...] 83% of the wildebeests, 71% of the zebras, 61% of the buffaloes, and 25% of Amboseli’s elephants died.


Amboseli National Park in Kenya KenyaMale elephant Michael, son of Mable. (2021)

Census


2010: The elephant population has been relatively stable, with 1,087 individuals counted in the year 2000; 1,090 in 2002 and 967 in 2007 compared to the year 2010 population of 1,266.

2012-03-03: Echo\'s family, the EBs, have had seven new calves since November. Ebony, Eliot, Enid, Ella, Elettra, Echeri and Eleanor have given birth to six males and one female. Eliot has the female, but this calf more than holds her own with her male cousins.


2020: Baby-boom, with 170 documented births, among the elephants subjects of Research.

2022-02-16: An extremely rare baby elephant twin has starved to death in Kenya during a prolonged drought. The calf\'s mother, a 36-year-old elephant called Angelina, who lives in the Amboseli National Park gave birth to twins, a male and a female, in 2020. In a statement on Facebook, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, which monitors the elephants in the reserve, said it was the male twin that had died.

2025-November: Amboseli is experiencing an elephant baby boom and welcomed 140 newborn elephants, the largest wave of births ever recorded in the region. The latest elephant to join the boom is Oralee of the OA2 family. She was discovered with twins last evening--a male and female. This is only the fifth set of twins recorded in Amboseli over the last 50 years.
Amboseli National Park in Kenya KenyaOralee with newborn twins, November 2025.

References for records about Amboseli National Park

Recommended Citation

Koehl, Dan (2026). Amboseli National Park, Elephant Encyclopedia. Available online at https://www.elephant.se/location2.php?location_id=48. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:


Amboseli National Park on elephant-news.com

Amboseli National Park is mentioned on Elephant News:

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