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The Hardwood family of elephants in Samburu national reserve, Kenya.
The Hardwood family of elephants in Samburu national reserve, Kenya. Photograph: Google Street View
The Hardwood family of elephants in Samburu national reserve, Kenya. Photograph: Google Street View

Google Safari View: walking with elephants in Kenya

This article is more than 8 years old

Kenya’s Samburu national park has been mapped by Google Street View, raising awareness of the reserve’s efforts to protect the elephant population

Google Street View has launched a map of Kenya’s Samburu national park, giving internet users the chance to get up close to the majestic elephants that live there. The project, created in partnership with Save the Elephants and with the support of the Samburu County government, aims to raise awareness about the struggle to protect the elephants, that remain at risk from poachers.

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Google drove its Street View car along one of the main roads that cuts through the 165 sq km park in February, collecting panoramic images of the spectacular reserve and the animals. As well as the elephants, Google captured images of a pride of lions, a leopard and zebra. The Street View car also passed a group of Samburu warriors walking beside the Ewaso Ng’iro river.

Save the Elephants’ head of field operations, David Daballen – who can recognise over 600 individual elephants in the park – said it was an “honour” to invite people on a virtual journey of his homeland. Writing in a post on the Google blog, he said that 100,000 elephants across Africa were killed for their ivory between 2010-2012, but that thanks to work in the Samburu national reserve their numbers are slowly increasing.

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“Today, a visit to Samburu is a chance not only to see these magnificent creatures in their natural habitat, but also discover a uniquely beautiful landscape where people’s lives are interwoven with the landscape’s wildlife,” he said.

The Google project details the stories of specific elephant families in the park, including the Spices family, the Hardwoods, the Swahili Ladies and the Clouds.

Google Street View has embarked on a growing number of special projects in recent years, taking its Street View camera on a punt through Venice, driving through the Tomatina festival in Spain and even up the rock face of Yosemite’s El Capitan.

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