When conservationists fitted a GPS collar to a young bull elephant in western Zambia in June 2023, they hoped to learn more about how elephants moved through one of Africa’s largest conservation landscapes. Two years later, the animal, known simply as Z16, had walked nearly 12,000 kilometres, crossed four countries, travelled through six national parks and produced one of the clearest modern records of the ancient migration routes elephants still appear to follow. His journey also highlighted a more complicated reality: while elephants ignore political borders, human-made fences and expanding agriculture increasingly shape where they can and cannot move.
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