Elephants may not debate in policy making, but they tell us how to get it right

A month ago, in January 2026, a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar signalled that a 24-year-old elephant matriarch, Liana, had left Samburu National Reserve. She moved west, then south, across the landscape linking the Samburu and Laikipia ecosystems

Motion cameras captured her and her family passing through Ol-Donyiro, along a corridor that thousands of herds have followed for generations. Leading her herd, she tracked water, forage and safety, guided not by policy documents but by ancestral memory passed down through generations.