Satao

African Bull Elephant in Tanzania, © Geir Kiste

The elephant pictured above is not a “big tusker,” but it gives you some idea of the size of these animals.

Weighing in at over six tons, Satao was the largest land mammal on earth. His tusks were 6.5 feet long and weighed well over 100 pounds each. He was beloved and well-monitored.

Satao was a “big tusker” who lived in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park. The name “big tusker” is reserved for elephants whose tusks touch the ground and weigh over 100 pounds each

Richard Moller (2014), Co-Founder and Chief Conservation Office of Tsavo Trust, who spotted Satao’s lifeless body from the air wrote:

In May of 2014, he was spotted nine times by air and ground. The last sighting was recorded on May 14, 2014. But in the days that followed, officials began to worry about his safety. There were no new sightings, and Satao had been last seen in an area known as a “poaching hotspot.”

On June 2, 2014, the lifeless body of big tusker was spotted during aerial reconnaissance. The elephant had fallen victim to poaching by poison and his face had been hacked off so poachers could remove the tusks. That elephant was Satao.

“[a] great life lost so that someone far away can have a trinket on their mantelpiece” (Paying the Ivory Price).

Satao, the largest land mammal on Earth, was victim of the merciless and bloody ivory trade.

Why are elephants in danger?

• Poaching: the primary cause, which has rapidly escalated since 2008

• climate change

• habitat loss

• human-animal conflict – all human-caused.

It is estimated that we are losing about 33,000 elephants per year. That is one every fifteen minutes. If this trend continues, we may lose elephants to extinction within our lifetime.

Satao is one of many elephants who have fallen victim to the ivory trade. In the past century, elephant populations have been in sharp decline, but in the past ten years, they have been in free fall. Researchers estimate that at the start of the last century, there were about 10,000,000 elephants. The most recent and comprehensive study now puts that number at less than 400,000.

To learn more about the Great Elephant Census visit:

http://www.greatelephantcensus.com/