When Mountain Bull and Satao—two of Kenya’s oldest and most famous elephant bulls—were killed by poachers inside two national parks, the deaths sent shock waves through Kenya’s conservation community and around the world. Poached for their enormous ivory tusks, Mountain Bull and Satao should have been well-protected, both by their fame and national park boundaries. Instead, in early May, poachers armed with spears illegally entered Mt. Kenya National Park, killed Mountain Bull, and hauled away his ivory. A few weeks later, poachers breached the border of Tsavo East National Park, killed Satao with a poisoned arrow, and ferried away his tusks. Where these majestic bulls once roamed for more than four decades—surviving even the ivory wars of the 1970s and 1980s—their carcasses lay still and sprawled in the dirt. With the outpouring of eulogies and tributes that followed their deaths, Mountain Bull and Satao put a face on the tens of thousands of African elephants killed every year whose ivory, in some parts of the world, is worth more than their lives. “It is an irreparable loss,” says AWF’s Vice President for Species Protection, Philip Muruthi. “Not only because two of Kenya’s legends are gone forever, but it’s one more blow to the species as a whole.” Beyond the loss of two beloved elephants, the deaths of Mountain Bull and Satao may be indicative of a larger tragedy unfolding: an end to the era of big tuskers.
