Moira

Cynthia Moss introduced a naming system to the elephant families in Amboseli, Kenya, back in the 1980s. When she started, there were more elephant families in Amboseli than letters in the alphabet, so Cynthia gave each a two-letter code. Thus, there was an AA family and an AB family, a ZA and a ZB family and so on.

Cynthia tried to follow an ethnic theme when naming some of the elephant families. In the AA family we have US names such as Annabel, Alyce, Amy, Alison, Agatha, Amelia, while the MBs were given Celtic names, such as Maggie, Molly, Megan – and Moira.

The MB family, including Moira, are more Tanzanian then Kenyan – we say they hold dual passports. If you look on the map attached here, you see the red dots on the map that go right up to the Tanzanian border. Sadly poaching is very severe in Tanzania and despite Big Life Foundation’s work on the ground, it is a dangerous territory for wild elephants.

Moira had a baby elephant in 2012. We received the following illustration from Amboseli Trust for Elephants: Unfortunately, Moira and most of the MB family haven’t been seen in over a year now. We expect that they crossed the border to Tanzania and hope they are well off and return to Kenya, where Big Life is more active and likely to spot the MB family then when they are on the Tanzanian side.