100 years of elephants: See how Nat Geo has photographed these iconic creatures

Elephants kick up ash from a wildfire in South Sudan’s Sudd wetland in a previously unpublished image taken in 2012. Pastoralists often set these fires, adding the threat of habitat loss to the ever present risk of ivory poaching.

A female forest elephant charges photographer Nick Nichols in the Central African Republic’s Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in 1993. ‘‘It was very clear that we were in a place that was ruled by nature and not by humans. It was truly wild,’‘ says Nichols, whose photographs were published in July 1995. Seconds after Nichols took the image, ‘‘we both then turned off and ran.’‘

In a view from under the waters of Botswana’s Okavango Delta, an African elephant trumpets during play. This image appeared in the December 2004 issue of the magazine. Nearly half the continent’s remaining savanna elephants live in Botswana, most of them in the Okavango Delta.

Two lions watch elephants spar in Botswana’s Okavango Delta in a previously unpublished photograph taken in October 2018. Beverly Joubert is one of the first wildlife photographers to capture such intimate portraits of wild African elephants.

A baby elephant takes a sand bath in Zambia in this image published in May 1996. At birth, elephants already weigh some 200 pounds and stand about three feet tall.

Photographer Frans Lanting captured this lone bull elephant feigning a charge at a water hole in the Okavango Delta. The image was first published in his National Geographic book, Forgotten Edens: Exploring the World's Wild Places, in January 1993.

Since the first elephant story was published in National Geographic in 1906, the magazine has taken different angles on covering the pachyderms, from hunter’s quarry to beasts of burden to species that need saving. As time went on, technology also advanced, helping photographers capture more intimate moments. Michael ‘‘Nick’’ Nichols made this photograph of orphan elephants splashing in a human-made water hole in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park by mounting a camera to a pole, which allowed him to get a closer view of the elephants but still maintain a physical distance. Daily mud baths are key to elephant hygiene, offering the animals effective sun protection while also cleansing their skin of bugs and ticks.

To keep the ivory from the black market, a ranger hacks the tusks off a poached elephant in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park in an image published in October 2012.

Orphan elephants gather around a water hole in northern Kenya’s Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in an article published in August 2017. The Samburu communities that care for the young animals try to return them to their original habitat, where they’ll have a good chance of reconnecting with their relatives. Ami Vitale’s photographs reflect National Geographic’s shift toward covering solutions to the crisis of declining elephant populations.

This image of savanna elephants moving across the Serengeti plains was published in National Geographic in October 2012. In 2021, scientists identified two species of African elephants: savanna elephants, which are endangered, and forest elephants, which are critically endangered.