In 2019 Federico Veronesi heard about a striking ‘great tusker’ elephant that aerial patrols carried out by the Tsavo Trust NGO had spotted roaming in Tsavo East National Park. He says, ‘In one of their reports, they showed a photograph, taken from the air, of a huge, amazing great tusker, with the tusks meeting at the tip, perfectly curved and symmetrical. The tusks were so impressive – very thick, very heavy, scraping the ground. I thought this elephant, named Balguda, was one of the most stunning tuskers I’d ever seen.’
Finding and photographing Balguda became Veronesi’s mission. But it wasn’t easy. ‘Very few people have seen him at all, and from the ground even less,’ he explains. ‘I tried many, many times in many different areas, along rivers, around watering…
