Google launches Kenya’s Samburu Park on Street View

Google Street View launches a safari tour with Kenya’s elephants.

“We hope that by bringing Street View to Samburu, we will inspire people around the world to gain a deeper appreciation for elephants”, the AFP news agency quotes Google Kenya’s Farzana Khubchandani as saying.

The Kenya project was launched in collaboration with conservation group Save the Elephants.

In February 2015, a vehicle from Google Street View drove around the park in order to alleviate any fears about the tool being used as an advantage by poachers.

Image of Samburu National Reserve from Google’s Street View program in Kenya, where viewers can get a close up look at elephants in East Africa.

It means that you can feel like you are standing metres away from African wildlife including elephants without leaving your bed.

According to the Kenyan Tourist board, this is the country’s first virtual tour of a national park. Hence, as the organization worked to elevate awareness to Samburu as well as the work carried out there, Google handily stepped up to the plate and offered their Street View trekker technology so that the reserve can be documented, saving you a few thousand dollars in the process in airfare and hotel nights.

David Daballen, head of area operations at Save the Elephants, wrote in a Google blog post about the launch that he might recognise greater than 600 elephants.

“It’s exciting to open a window onto Samburu, and to help us better protect its elephants”, said Save the Elephants chief Iain Douglas-Hamilton, speaking in Samburu, some 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Samburu’s county governor, Moses Lenolkulal, was also present at the ceremonial launch stating that the more people who can be exposed to our culture, people and majestic elephants including other wildlife where everything co-exists, more conservation efforts and sustainability culture can be applied to this fragile ecosystem, for the future of many more generations.

David Daballen, of Save the Elephants, said that upwards of 100,000 elephants had been poached in Africa from 2010 to 2012 but that the number of elephants in places like Samburu are slowly on the rise again.