Baby Boom for Elephant Conservation Project in Kenya as 138 Calves Born Already in 2020

Conservationists are celebrating a record year for elephant births at the Amboseli Trust, where elephants - who have a long gestation period of 22 months - are giving birth in huge numbers.

An elephant conservation project in Kenya is welcoming over one-hundred baby calves in a record year for elephant births.

The Amboseli Trust for Elephants has recorded 138 new calves so far in 2020, with even more to be expected throughout the year.

The number looks set to surpass the annual record of 201 births, which occured back in 2011. 

“It seems baby elephants are falling out of the sky”, the Trust’s director Cynthia Moss told local press in Kenya.

Incredibly, the births include two sets of twin calves. In February, 35-year-old Angelina gave birth to twins, a male and a female. In April, Pazia became only the fourth known mother of twins at Amboseli, since records began.

Moss has studied the elephant population at Amboseli since the early 1970s, and in that time observed a gap of some 38 years between the birth of elephant twins.

An extremely rare occurrence, the chances of elephant twins being born are less than one percent.

Generally, elephant births can be few and far between, as their gestation period is 22 months, with intervals between births around four-and-a-half years. As such, it’s rare for lots of births to overlap in the wild and in conservation projects, but this has been a “baby boom year” for Amboseli - thanks in part to a good ecosystem of rain and lots of vegetation.

“The ability of a female to conceive and carry a calf to term depends greatly on her own physical condition,” explains Moss. “During drought years females may stop all reproductive cycling and not resume until rainfall improves with resulting vegetation growth”.

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