Agbaibor was barely eight months old when they found it alone, near an oil palm plantation beside Okomu National Park, in southern Nigeria.
It is an African forest elephant, a species as elusive as it is threatened: only 200 remain in the entire country, and just about 40 survive in Okomu. At that age, no calf should be without its mother—they are only weaned between two and three years old. No one knows what happened to its herd.
They named it after the ranger who helped rescue it, and today it is the first rescued orphaned elephant in Nigeria’s history. At first, it barely ate. Now it drinks two liters of formula from a bottle several times a day, fed by caregivers such as Joshua Aribasoye. The plan is to return it to the forest when it is ready—and for it to walk among its own again.
