LONDON -- World wildlife preservation groups have condemned the recent killing of three prime bull elephants on the Kenya-Tanzania border in Africa during hunts that a wildlife researcher called "about as dangerous and sporting as shooting your neighbor's cocker spaniel."
Nearly 50 years old and with majestic 80-pound tusks, the three elephants were breeding bulls from Kenya's Amboseli National Park, where a protected herd of 840 elephants is a big tourist attraction.
Hunting elephants is banned in Kenya. The three bulls, and possibly a fourth, were shot during the autumn in Tanzania, just across the border from the park in Kenya.
Cynthia Moss, director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, said the bulls were shot legally by hunters licensed by the Tanzania government. But the shootings, she said, violated a long-standing informal agreement between Kenya and Tanzania against hunting elephants from the Amboseli reserve.
Those elephants have all long been "habituated" to human beings and thus easy targets for hunters when they drift outside the park's boundaries, said Ms. Moss, who has studied the animals there for 22 years.
Unafraid and trusting of humans and used to vehicles, Amboseli elephants are easily approached to within a few feet. They are all known by sight and name to Ms. Moss and her research associates. The slain bulls were known as "Sleepy," "M10," and "RPG."
Amboseli elephants are also known by name to the Masai people who live on the edge of the reserve and derive considerable income from the tourist trade generated by the game park. Members of Masai tribe first brought word of the kills.
"The habituation of elephants [getting used to humans] has been going on for over 60 years," said Ms. Moss, the author of the book "Elephant Memories."
"The result of this long process is that Amboseli is one of the best places in Africa to view elephants. The large bulls were a particular attraction."
The three dead elephants were among only 10 older breeding bulls at the Amboseli park. Their deaths seriously jeopardize the gene pool in the small Amboseli population, according to representatives of several wildlife groups.
Tanzania receives $4,000 for each license to shoot an elephant and issues 50 a year, according to William Travers, director of the Born Free Foundation.