Last of the ‘Super Tuskers’: Saving Kenya’s majestic megafauna

Imagine being a child and having a front-row seat, every day, to one of nature’s most remarkable live-action shows. That was the reality for conservationist Joseph Kyalo, who grew up along the border of the largest protected area in Kenya.

Tsavo East National Park is known as the “theater of the wild” and is Kenya’s oldest park. Along with Tsavo West National Park and other conservancies, it forms a preservation area covering about 42,000 square kilometers (16,200 square miles), known as the Tsavo ecosystem.

Rhinos, buffaloes, lions, leopards, cheetah, wildebeest and zebra call it home, but among its residents is one giant of an animal that stops people in their tracks. Growing between 10 to 13 feet tall, it is a rare type of elephant – positively prehistoric looking – known as a Super Tusker.

“My first encounter with a big tusker was here in Tsavo National Park, and I was amazed at how big the tusks were,” Kyalo recalls. “They were huge, more than 100 pounds per side, and were very long and symmetrical, almost touching the ground.”

The thrill of witnessing nature’s show as a child ignited a passion in Joseph, and then a career. He’s a conservation officer and pilot for Tsavo Trust, an organization dedicated to protecting the wildlife in the Tsavo Conservation Area (TCA) – in particular, the Super Tuskers.

“The Tsavo ecosystem holds arguably the largest number of big tuskers in Africa,” says Kyalo. The problem is, that’s not a lot.

By CNN