This is Not a Drill

There’s an elephant in the Maasai Mara who is especially close to Angama's heart. His name is Fitz, named after the late Steve Fitzgerald, founder of Angama, who pushed the boundaries to advance long-term conservation.

Since 2019, the Angama Foundation has supported his protection through the Mara Elephant Project (MEP), using a collaring and monitoring approach developed in collaboration with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI). 

Fitz is a bull who has long called the Nyekweri Forest home, sharing it with a growing herd of more than 70 elephants. For six years, he stayed tucked away beneath the forest’s thick canopy, even as the land around him changed dramatically. 

Once a safe haven, the Nyekweri Forest has lost more than 90% of its cover in just six years. Subdivided, cleared for homes and maize fields, and laced with electric fences, it's no longer the sanctuary it was. For elephants like Fitz, every step outside their shrinking territory means navigating a maze of wires, barriers and risk.

But earlier this year, Fitz did something he's never done before. 

In March 2025, after years of staying in the forest, something shifted. In a single day, Fitz left the forest and descended the escarpment, passed Angama Mara, and neared the boundary of the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

Two months later, he ventured out again, this time with around 40 elephants in tow. They travelled all the way to the Mara North Conservancy, reaching the banks of the Mara River near MEP's headquarters.

Fitz was first fitted with a tracking collar on 20 August 2019, then re-collared in December 2021, and again on 9 July 2024, with support from KWS veterinarian Dr Njoroge. This collar allows MEP to closely monitor his movements; it’s how they first noticed the change in his behaviour.  

Fitz's time beyond the forest was brief, but the implications were significant. MEP researchers believe his movements suggest the herd is searching for a new home range. With traditional routes to food and water blocked by fences, the elephants are being forced to adapt. 

'The expansion of fences and ongoing deforestation around Nyakweri are pushing these elephants to look elsewhere for food and space. They're not just exploring — they’re adapting to survive,’ says MEP Researcher Caroline Mumbi. 

MEP’s Golf Ranger team continues patrols through what remains of the Nyekweri Forest, monitoring both wildlife and the neighbouring communities. Between January and October 2025, they responded to 63 incidents, a clear sign that human–elephant conflict is on the rise. 

During this time, seven arrests were made for illegal logging, charcoal production and bushmeat poaching.  Eighteen snares were removed, but conservation doesn’t happen in isolation. MEP held four community meetings to address tensions over crop loss, livestock injury and forest degradation. These conversations build trust and encourage landowners to support efforts that reduce conflict, allowing human-wildlife coexistence.   

With support from the Angama Foundation, Fitz and his herd are now part of a growing body of data and action that is protecting one of the Mara’s most threatened habitats, shaping the future of forest conservation and key stakeholder conversations across the region.

Mara Elephant Project (MEP) was established in 2011 with the mission of protecting elephants and their habitats across the Greater Mara Ecosystem (GME). The GME is one of the last major wildlife refuges on Earth and is most famous for its annual migration of nearly two million wildebeest and zebras. In 2012, poaching emerged as the number one threat to elephants when 96 elephants were killed for their ivory, but now, the expansion of the human footprint resulting in increased human-elephant conflict (HEC) and habitat loss is an accelerating crisis.

MEP focuses on four aims to connect the dots in conservation: elephant population protection, elephant habitat protection, human-elephant coexistence and landscape connectivity. Their approach is to Monitor, Evaluate, and Protect the 'MEP Method', through the deployment of innovative techniques and technologies to monitor the four dots, evaluate conservation data and produce actionable outputs to influence policy, landscape planning, and the deployment of resources.

Over the last decade, MEP’s approach has had a significant impact in ensuring that the population of over 1.4M people across the GME coexist peacefully with wildlife.