Iconic Tim

The celebrated elephant died on Tuesday morning (February 4, 2020) aged fifty years in Mada area of Amboseli National Park. The park management visited the scene and secured the body.

The body was transferred to the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi for a taxidermist to prepare the body for preservation for education and exhibition purposes. Big Tim is one of Africa’s last big tusker elephants that roam in a vast, remote wilderness of southern Kenya. Some years back, Tim, the great patriarch of Amboseli National Park, was struck on the head with a large rock and pierced through the ear with a spear, the tip of which was embedded in his shoulder. Kenya Wildlife Service in collaboration with partners sedated and treated him and then he found his way back to the Amboseli marsh in a fairly short time.

Elephant families are matriarchal and males are solitary from the group when they reach sexual maturity. But Tim was always welcome to travel in the company of females and their families. He was unassuming, unpretentious and laid back.

A benevolent, slow-moving preserver of the peace at Amboseli, he was well known and loved throughout Kenya