The Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) is the world’s longest continuous scientific study of wild African elephants. Founded in 1972 in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, AERP has followed known individual elephants and their families across generations, producing an unmatched body of knowledge about elephant society, behavior, demography, movement, communication, and conservation.
Today, the project is managed by the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), the non-profit organization created to sustain this long-term research and translate science into practical conservation policy, ecosystem management, and community coexistence across the wider Amboseli landscape.
AERP at a Glance
- Established: 1972. Read project history on its website here.
- Location: Amboseli National Park and the wider Amboseli ecosystem
- Managed by: Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE)
- Core focus: Long-term, individual-based elephant research
- Why it’s unique: Multi-decade life histories of known elephants—rare for any wild mammal, extraordinary for a long-lived species like elephants
- Global significance: Foundational to modern elephant biology, behavior, and conservation policy
Why Amboseli Is a Perfect Natural Laboratory
Amboseli’s ecology makes it ideal for long-term elephant research:
- Permanent swamps (fed by underground flows from Mount Kilimanjaro) concentrate elephants during dry seasons.
- Open plains allow reliable identification and observation of individuals.
- A wider ecosystem beyond park boundaries enables study of movement, dispersal, and human–elephant coexistence.
- Stable, multi-generational families can be followed for decades—something few wildlife systems allow.
This combination lets researchers connect environmental change, social structure, and population dynamics over time.
AERP and ATE: How They Fit Together
- AERP is the research program—the long-term field study of Amboseli’s elephants.
- ATE (Amboseli Trust for Elephants) is the organization that runs, funds, and supports AERP, and uses its science to drive conservation action, policy engagement, and community partnerships.
In short: AERP produces the science; ATE ensures it protects elephants and landscapes.
Founders and Scientific Leadership
AERP was established in 1972 by Dr. Cynthia Moss and Dr. Harvey Croze.
- Cynthia Moss has led the project for decades and founded ATE to secure its future. Her work on elephant social life, family structure, and long-term demography transformed elephant science.
- Harvey Croze co-founded the project and helped establish its early field methods and conservation orientation.
- Dr. Joyce Poole and other collaborators contributed major insights, especially on elephant communication, cognition, and social behavior.
Together with Kenyan researchers and long-serving field teams, they built one of the most respected wildlife research programs in the world.
Research Methods: How AERP Works
AERP is built on individual-based, long-term field science:
- Photographic identification of elephants using stable physical traits (ears, tusks, scars, vein patterns).
- Life-history monitoring: recording births, deaths, family relationships, and dispersal events.
- Behavioral observation: documenting social interactions, leadership, mating systems, and communication.
- Ecological tracking: linking rainfall, drought, and habitat conditions to survival and reproduction.
- Movement mapping: understanding seasonal movements and long-distance dispersal across the ecosystem.
This approach allows AERP to answer questions that short-term studies cannot—especially for a species that can live 60–70 years.
Major Research Themes and Findings
1) Elephant Society, Social Knowledge & Leadership
AERP demonstrated that elephant families are matriarchal societies where older females play a critical role.
- Families led by older, more experienced matriarchs respond more effectively to threats and environmental challenges.
- Matriarchs function as repositories of social and ecological knowledge, improving group survival—especially during droughts and periods of danger.
- This showed that age and experience have measurable adaptive value, reshaping how scientists think about leadership in social mammals.
Conservation implication: Protecting older females protects the social intelligence and resilience of elephant families.
2) Demography, Drought & Long-Term Population Dynamics
Because AERP tracks known individuals over decades, it can link climate variability to population change.
- Severe droughts cause age-specific mortality, especially among calves and juveniles.
- Reproduction slows after droughts and recovers only gradually, meaning climate shocks have long-lasting demographic effects.
- Population recovery is slow and cumulative, reflecting elephants’ long life histories.
Conservation implication: Protecting dry-season refuges, water sources, and movement corridors is essential for climate resilience.
3) Movement, Dispersal & Landscape Connectivity
AERP showed that elephant movement is structured and knowledge-driven, not random.
- Families follow traditional routes to water and grazing, guided by experienced leaders.
- Young males disperse predictably as part of normal life history, supporting gene flow across regions.
- Blocking corridors with fences, farms, or settlements has long-term population-level consequences.
Conservation implication: Elephant conservation must be landscape-scale, with functional wildlife corridors beyond park boundaries.
4) Communication, Coordination & Social Bonds
Research linked to Amboseli elephants revealed the importance of low-frequency (infrasonic) communication for long-distance coordination.
- This helps explain how large, spread-out groups maintain cohesion and coordinate movement across wide spaces.
- Communication underpins effective leadership and group decision-making.
Conservation implication: Disrupting social networks (e.g., through selective removal of older animals) damages more than numbers—it damages social functioning.
5) Human–Elephant Coexistence
AERP combines elephant movement and behavior data with human land-use patterns to understand where and why conflict occurs.
- Conflict hotspots often coincide with traditional elephant routes intersecting farms and settlements.
- Research shows that corridor protection, land-use planning, and early-warning systems are more effective than purely reactive measures.
- Coexistence improves when communities are engaged in benefit-sharing and targeted deterrence.
Conservation implication: Long-term solutions require planning for people and elephants together, not separating them.
From Science to Policy and Practice
AERP’s findings have influenced:
- Anti-poaching strategies and arguments for sustained protection
- International elephant conservation policy, including debates around the ivory trade
- Protected area management, emphasizing long-term, evidence-based planning
- Corridor and community conservancy design in the Amboseli ecosystem
Amboseli’s elephants are now among the best-documented large mammals on Earth, and their data are used globally.
The Wider Amboseli Ecosystem: Corridors and Communities
Elephants do not live only inside Amboseli National Park. AERP and ATE emphasize:
- Ecosystem-scale conservation that includes community lands
- Wildlife corridors linking seasonal ranges
- Partnerships with Maasai communities to reduce conflict and secure movement routes
- Land-use planning informed by decades of movement data
This represents a shift from “fortress conservation” to connected landscapes.
Challenges Facing Amboseli’s Elephants
- Habitat fragmentation from agriculture and settlement
- Climate change and increasing drought frequency
- Human–elephant conflict outside protected areas
- Regional poaching risks, even when local protection is strong
AERP’s long-term dataset is crucial for understanding how these pressures affect elephants across generations, not just year to year.
Why Long-Term Research Matters
Elephants live long lives and change slowly. Without long-term projects like AERP:
- You can’t measure true lifetime reproductive success
- You can’t see multi-generational social learning
- You can’t track real population recovery or decline
- You can’t design future-proof conservation strategies
AERP proves that time is one of the most important tools in conservation science.
AERP Today: A Global Model for Conservation Science
Today, the Amboseli Elephant Research Project stands as:
- A global benchmark for long-term wildlife research
- A foundation for evidence-based elephant conservation
- A driver of corridor protection and coexistence planning
- Proof that science, communities, and conservation management can work together
Final Take
The Amboseli Elephant Research Project is more than a research study—it is one of the most important conservation science efforts ever undertaken for a large, long-lived, intelligent species. By following known elephants for over half a century, AERP has changed how the world understands elephant society, leadership, resilience, and survival—and has provided the scientific backbone for protecting elephants and their landscapes far beyond Amboseli