Four Weeks. The Largest Land Animal on Earth.
Kilimanjaro catches the first light as elephants cross the swamp below. Amboseli hosts one of Africa's longest-running elephant studies, and for four weeks, you join it, identifying individuals at close range from research vehicles.
Based in Kimana, you'll age and identify elephants from safari vehicles, interview farming communities along elephant corridors about crop-raiding mitigation, and count elephants across the grasslands and bushlands they depend on.
What You'll Do
Elephant Aging & Identification
Age and sex elephants and identify individuals by body characteristics from research vehicles, documenting feeding, social, and movement behavior at close range.
Human-Elephant Coexistence
Visit farming communities along elephant corridors to document conflict events and survey farmers on the causes, impacts, and mitigation of crop-raiding.
Elephant Counts
Count elephants across Amboseli National Park using the ground-count method, building population and distribution data alongside long-term research.
Field Sites
Your fieldwork spans Amboseli's marshes, community rangelands, and the wildlife corridors that keep elephant populations connected.
Amboseli Swamps & Plains
Seasonal marshes fed by Kilimanjaro's snowmelt that draw large elephant herds.
Kimana Community Rangelands
Maasai-managed lands where elephants move between the national park and the habitats around it.
Maasai Mara
An expedition where students collect elephant photobook data and meet community conservancies.
Amboseli's Elephants, Known One by One.
Amboseli hosts one of Africa's longest-running elephant studies. Students join that work: aging and sexing elephants, identifying individuals by ear notches and tusk shape from research vehicles, and building an elephant photobook as herds feed and move through the Amboseli plains. In Maasai communities along the Kimana corridor, crop-raiding interviews put a human price on every meter of unfenced boundary.
Learn by Doing
One course anchors your four weeks: elephant behavioral ecology, close-range identification and counts, and human-coexistence fieldwork. Most days begin before sunrise and end with data analysis back at the center.
Course
One field course centered on elephant behavioral ecology and savanna conservation.
Studies the African elephant as keystone species through elephant aging and identification, ground counts, and human-elephant coexistence fieldwork across the Amboseli ecosystem.
View Syllabus (PDF)Spend Your Summer with Elephants
Four weeks of field research in the Amboseli ecosystem, beneath Kilimanjaro.
Dates & Costs
4 weeks, 4 credits. Financial aid and SFS scholarships available.
