Amboseli Scientists Reveal Identity of Slain Bull in Tanzania

Amboseli Scientists Reveal Identity of Slain Bull in Tanzania:
Urgent Call to Protect Amboseli Elephants from Trophy Hunting

Amboseli National Park, Kenya (14 March 2024): As international outcry continues over the killing by sport hunters of a third bull elephant in the Enduimet area of Tanzania, researchers at the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) have today revealed the identity of the first victim.
After obtaining a photo of the carcass of the first male killed, before it was burned, Cynthia Moss, Director, and Norah Njiraini, Assistant Director of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, were able to positively identify the male as Gilgil, a well-known individual from the study population. Gilgil, the son of Golda, matriarch of the GB family, and fathered by huge, iconic bull Dionysus, was born in December 1987; at his death he was only 35 years old and just entering his reproductive years.
Moss and Njiraini were able to identify Gilgil because an elephant’s skin on its whole body is basically a giant fingerprint. With unique folds, creases, vein patterns, lumps and bumps, one elephant can easily be distinguished from another.

Gilgil in 2016 when he was 28 years old; as with all male elephants he and his tusks continued to grow

Gilgil became independent of the GB family, a central family consistently using the Park, when he was 13 years old in 2000. Since then he has been sighted 158 times. He was last recorded in the Park in January 2022.
The Amboseli elephants are a unique and iconic cross-border elephant population, sharing an ecosystem between Kenya and Tanzania. Since 1995, these elephants have utilized the area in relative peace, due to a moratorium on trophy hunting agreed to by both nations.
But last week, continuing an unexpected policy shift that began in 2023, a third Amboseli bull was shot dead on the Tanzanian side of the cross-border area by international sport hunters. This death, along with that of Gilgil killed in September and another bull in November of last year, signal the sudden end to thirty years of adherence to the cross-border agreement that protected the Amboseli elephants from hunting encroachment.
The Amboseli Trust for Elephants—with our partners ElephantVoices and Big Life—is calling on the governments of Kenya and Tanzania to resume cross-border collaboration and end trophy hunting in the West Kilimanjaro/Enduimet area. Such an action would renew the spirit of the original bilateral agreement and would also help protect the Amboseli elephants, who have already experienced such stressors as poaching, habitat loss, droughts, and human-wildlife conflict.
The Amboseli elephants who utilize this cross-border area have flourished in the three decades while the hunting ban was honored, becoming international symbols of successful conservation efforts. These elephants are not only sources of great scientific knowledge and key attractions for the eco-tourism economy, they also represent a unique and irreplaceable natural wildlife heritage for the people of both nations.