{"id":33060,"date":"2017-03-07T10:48:48","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T10:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/satao-one-of-the-last-giant-tusker-elephants\/"},"modified":"2017-03-07T10:45:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T10:45:31","slug":"satao-one-of-the-last-giant-tusker-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/satao-one-of-the-last-giant-tusker-elephants\/","title":{"rendered":"Satao, one of the last &#8216;giant tusker&#8217; elephants, killed in Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{A rare African elephant &#8211; one of the continent&#8217;s oldest and largest &#8211; died in a suspected poaching incident, a conservation group has said.}<\/p>\n<p>Satao II, a 50-year-old so-called &#8220;giant tusker&#8221; was found dead near the Tsavo National Park border.<\/p>\n<p>Conservationists at the park believe he may have been killed be a poison arrow, although the cause of death has not yet been confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Satao was named after another giant tusker killed by poachers in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>There are now fewer than 30 African &#8220;big tuskers&#8221; &#8211; adult bulls with ivory large enough to brush the ground &#8211; in the world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am pretty gutted really,&#8221; Richard Moller, head of the Tsavo Trust, told AFP.<br \/>\n&#8220;This particular elephant was one that was very approachable, one of those easy old boys to find. Many are the others are much more difficult to see.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He has been through lots of droughts and probably other attempts at poaching.&#8221;<br \/>\nA team from the park and Kenyan Wildlife Service recovered the animal&#8217;s enormous ivory tusks intact, before poachers could claim them, the park said.<\/p>\n<p>His carcass was discovered in January during routine aerial surveillance of the 25,000 sq km national park, but was only announced Monday.<\/p>\n<p>After the discovery, the park&#8217;s teams tracked an &#8220;elephant poaching gang&#8221; deep into the park, and two poachers were arrested.<\/p>\n<p>Among the items found with the poachers were three bows and 12 poisoned arrows, as well as an AK47 rifle, the park said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although this is a very sad loss in everyway, we can take some positive from this in that Satao&#8217;s carcass was indeed found with the ivory intact, and recovered before it could fall into the wrong hands and further fuel the illegal ivory market,&#8221; the Tsavo Trust said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;More importantly, this poaching gang&#8230; has been broken for ever.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-18656 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_94963448_gettyimages-90037378.jpg\" alt=\"One of the park&#039;s elephants, photographed in 2009. It takes decades for ivory tusks to grow to &quot;giant tusker&quot; size\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{A rare African elephant &#8211; one of the continent&#8217;s oldest and largest &#8211; died in a suspected poaching incident, a conservation group has said.} Satao II, a 50-year-old so-called &#8220;giant tusker&#8221; was found dead near the Tsavo National Park border. Conservationists at the park believe he may have been killed be a poison arrow, although [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33060"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33060"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}