In 1972, the world’s longest-running study of wild elephants was first launched in Kenya, making a star of one of its subjects – Echo.

For decades, the Amboseli Elephant Research Project followed Echo and the rest of the park’s population to learn more about their behaviour, communication and social bonds.

And in 1990, when the project began to attract wider attention, a documentary TV crew asked to film one of the groups. It was the start of Echo’s life in front of the camera.

The grand old matriarch would help raise four generations of her family, protecting them from attacks by lions, conflicts with local farmers, and the effects of famine.

Dr Cynthia Moss, who set up the project, tells Jane Wilkinson about the highs and lows of following Echo and the elephants.

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(Photo: Echo in the Amboseli National Park, Kenya,1996. Credit: Carla Signorini/Alamy)