![\"Craig,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/4e10c52e-d377-4759-b6aa-e845f4a97bc3.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFor more than half a century Craig the elephant was a tourist favourite who had a sideline in beer promotion.<\/p>\n
Yet the greatest achievement of the so-called super tusker, conservationists said, could be the fact that he lived a long life and died not from a poacher\u2019s bullet but from natural causes, aged 54.<\/p>\n
His longevity was being celebrated as evidence of how conservation efforts have curbed ivory poaching. Know for his \u201cground-sweeping tusks and calm, dignified presence\u201d, Craig died at the Amboseli National Park on Saturday, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said.<\/p>\n
Craig was believed to be one of Africa\u2019s largest super tuskers \u2014 rare examples of male elephants with ivory tusks weighing more than 45kg each \u2014 and was among the last such creatures on the continent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Craig \u201cwas deeply loved for his remarkably calm nature\u201d<\/p>\n
KENYA WILDLIFE SERVICE\/AP<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is rare for an elephant with ivory this large to die of natural causes in the wild. A huge debt of gratitude goes to [those] who guarded him day and night for years so he could live a full life,\u201d Adventure Safari Africa, a tourism outfit based in Arusha, Tanzania, said.<\/p>\n
Craig was one of Africa\u2019s most photographed animals and in 2021 was made the ambassador of the Kenyan beer brand Tusker.<\/p>\n
![\"Middle-class](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/d2b673c0-b99f-40aa-80d3-2dbfda4cd0b6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Craig\u2019s likeness adorned Tusker beer bottles<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond his extraordinary tusks, Craig was deeply loved for his remarkably calm nature,\u201d the KWS said. \u201cHe appeared to understand his place in the world \u2014 often pausing patiently as visitors photographed and filmed him. Widely documented and admired globally, he became a true ambassador of Amboseli and a symbol of what successful conservation looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 In pictures: photographers support Kenyan elephant sanctuary<\/a><\/p>\n African savannah elephants are the world\u2019s largest land mammals, with adult males weighing about six tonnes, and in the past creatures like Craig would have been a prized targets for poachers. During the peak of the modern global ivory trade in the 1970s and 1980s, about 70,000 African elephants were killed each year by poachers, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to his many protectors [Craig] died peacefully,\u201d the Amboseli Trust for Elephants said.<\/p>\n The KWS will decide what to do with Craig\u2019s remains, including his tusks. The body of another of Amboseli\u2019s super-tuskers, the elephant Tim who died in 2020, is preserved at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi.<\/p>\n Amboseli is one of Africa\u2019s most dense elephant habitats, with as many as 2,000 roaming the fertile plains below Mount Kilimanjaro on the border with Tanzania.<\/p>\n \u2022 Conservation with Kalashnikovs \u2014 the wild life of a dictator\u2019s zoologist<\/a><\/p>\n