The Rapidly Disappearing Elephants Of Tanzania

By John Burnett / NPR

Published December 13, 2015 at 1:05 PM PST

This story was published more than 8 years ago.

The Lukala River flows through the dry season. In places, the river flows above ground, and elsewhere it travels under the dry sand. Elephants know where to dig for the underground water.

This elephant had been enjoying morning mud baths in several pools before moving into the sun as the day warmed. The brown and gray muds were drying at different rates creating a patchwork pattern. Despite the losses to poaching, the Selous still has one of the largest elephant populations left in Africa.

Elephants are highly social animals with complex family structures. Greetings between individuals take many forms and can last for several minutes or longer.

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The Western cattle egret is often seen near the legs of elephants and other large mammals, feeding on the insects disturbed by the movement of the bird's much larger partner.

The Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania has seen its elephant population, one of the largest on the continent, go from 110,000 to fewer than 45,000 in the past decade due to poaching.

A small breeding herd of elephants moves across a channel leading to the Rufiji River as the sun sets.

A lone Common waterbuck on a sand bar in the Luwegu River.

(Top) Stately Borassus palms rise from swamps between the Rufiji River and the northern lakes. (Bottom left) Hippos in the Selous often spend their entire day semi submerged in pans where the water hyacinth helps to protect their thick but sensitive skin from the sun. (Bottom right) The Northern carmine bee-eater is a beautiful and gregarious seasonal visitor to the Selous.

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Wildlife Division staff and a hunting team document two recently poached elephants.

Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve is one of the largest wildlife refuges in the world and one of the last great wild places in Africa. The problem is — it's not a refuge from anything. In the past five years, 60 percent of its iconic elephant herds have been machine-gunned or poisoned by poachers for the value of their tusks.

Photographer Robert Ross spent six years traversing the 17,000 square miles of the Selous, from its miombo woodland to its Borassus palm swamps, and meandering sand rivers.

In his book, The Selous In Africa: A Long Way From Anywhere, Ross chronicled much more than the elephant slaughter. After all, who really wants a coffee table book of pachyderm carcasses? His stunning images inventory the magnificent biodiversity of the continent's oldest protected wilderness as well as the threats it now faces.

Ross, a 59-year-old former real estate financier, fled New York City to pursue his passion for photography and Africa. During his time in the Selous from 2008 to 2014, "There has been a noticeable habitat change because of the loss of elephants," he says in a telephone interview from his home in Basalt, Colorado. "They're not coming through the country as much. It's returning to thicket. The elephants aren't there anymore to keep those areas clear."

Another observation: Ross says there are fewer elephants that go into the dry river beds and dig for water. Other animals would then come after and use the same water holes.

"Stuff like that has stopped," he says. "It's almost like climate change."

Ross doesn't just focus on elephants and other mega-fauna.

"My goal was to take a wholesale look at the ecosystem," he says, "to do something different than your typical Africa wildlife book."

He photographs elephant families, hippo pods, Nile crocodiles and lion cubs, but he also introduces us to the flower mantis, the flap-necked chameleon, the net-winged beetle, and the giant stick insect.

The feral beauty of the Selous, however, can mask the crisis unfolding there.

In 2014, UNESCO added the Selous to its list of World Heritage Sites in Danger because of the dramatic loss of wildlife.

Tanzania's elephant population, formerly the second biggest in Africa, has dropped from 110,000 in 2005 to fewer than 45,000 today.

In 2013 alone, Tanzania reportedly lost 30 elephants a day to the illegal ivory trade. Britain's Environmental Investigation Agency published a major exposé last year on Tanzania's elephant kill-off.

"Corruption is the key enabling factor at every stage of the ivory trafficking chain," says the report, which places blame on criminal syndicates that work in collusion with Tanzania government officials.

In 2012, NPR broadcast two reports on the elephant slaughter in the Selous.

A poacher named Mkanga, who lives near the boundary of the sanctuary, said he takes advantage of the beasts' ritual behavior that has been likened to mourning.

"You shoot one and before he dies the others come to mourn for the one who is injured," he said, "and so I kill another one, and kill another one."

Mkanga and another poacher told NPR the ivory buyers are Chinese nationals working in Tanzania.

The Selous turns 120 years old next year. Says Robert Ross, "We need to look after it better."