Ancient elephant migration routes are being blocked off – can anything stop the rising death toll?

Human-wildlife conflict has now overtaken poaching as a cause of fatalities - and is deadly for people too. Some villages are finding new ways to live alongside them

• Photographs by Edwin Ndeke

At nearly 3.5-metres tall and weighing as much as a bus, you could be forgiven for assuming that Goshi - one of an estimated 30 super-tusker" elephants left in Africa - would be easy to find. The radio tracker picking up his signal beeps encouragingly, indicating the giant bull is within 200 metres. But the dry season has turned the mass of arid acacia scrubland grey, and everything seems to resemble an elephant.

Even when they are invisible, the huge herbivores shape the landscape here. There are 17,000 elephants across the Tsavo region, Kenya's largest protected area, which is divided in two. Each year, elephants wander huge distances between feeding grounds, following the seasonal rains as they have done for thousands of years.