The killing in late May of the great tusker Satao, in Kenya's Tsavo National Park, was another blunt reminder that no elephant in Africa is safe. A poacher's poisoned arrow felled him, and his death was presumed to have been long and painful.
Satao was thought to be the largest-tusked elephant surviving in Africa. While he lived, he was a talisman of a wild land; in death, another tragic example of conservation's failure.