Amboseli National Park in Kenya


Amboseli National Park


Typewild
Owner
Founded1968
Place Namanga
Country Kenya
Website Website
Directors
Key People 1972-: Cynthia Moss (researcher)
Veterinarians
Elephant department
Head keepers
of elephants
Elephant keepers
Google map
Relevant literature

Description

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

Living elephants

At the Amboseli National Park lives 164 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.

References for records about Amboseli National Park

Recommended Citation

Koehl, Dan (2021). 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:

DateLinks which opens in new window
2010-11-27Kenyan rangers gun down elephant poachers - Elephant News
2011-06-0840-year study finds elephants and humans are remarkably alike - Elephant News
2011-09-19Chinese demand revives ivory trade - Elephant News
2011-12-15Two albinistic elephants born in 2011, heres a short summary of white elephants i know. - Elephant News
2013-10-19Census shows increasing elephant population in kenya national park - Elephant News
2020-08-14Some good news: an 'elephant baby boom' in one kenyan national park - Elephant News


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About this documentThis document was updated: 2022-03-13 17:32:15 with valid HTML5 Valid CSS


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