Brent Stirton is no stranger to photographing elephants and their mysterious ways. A photojournalist who specializes in capturing wildlife and animals’ interactions with humans, Stirton was an obvious choice to highlight the intelligent and adaptable pachyderm for National Geographic’s May issue. 

Stirton has been passionate about documenting the symbiotic—and sometimes stormy—relationships between animals and humans since witnessing an outpouring of grief over the 2007 death of endangered mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So passionate, in fact, that he wasn’t fazed by monsoon season in Southeast Asia while on assignment for National Geographic to photograph the way elephants are learning to live with humans.

We talked to Stirton about how he trekked through India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand to discover the secrets of the elephants.

What’s the story behind the cover?

Stirton’s past elephant coverage has largely focused on the deadly ivory trade, but this story differed. He pitched a glimpse at what it means to be an Asian elephant: revered in local cultures and religions but mistreated in everyday life. The story would shine a light on the effects of human development and encroachment on elephant territory. 

“There’s tremendous deference for elephants across Asia. But at the same time, their habitats grow smaller and smaller over time, and that demonstrates a lack of care,” he says. “It’s a really complex story, and at the heart of it all, their survival in the wild is going to be based on how much we care about them.”

As Sri Lanka has invested in tourism and agriculture in recent years, and India has seen unprecedented growth, there’s been little thought toward planning elephant corridors and preserving habitats, leading to increased deadly conflict as humans move into those areas. 

Stirton encountered a few issues while photographing the animals: most notably, monsoon rains. Elephants tend not to gather when it rains, Stirton says, because that abundance of water and food gives them less reason to search for resources together. 

He had to get creative to find elephant gathering spots. Navigating around Sri Lanka during an economic crisis that caused a fuel shortage and a near collapse of the government presented challenges as well.

Further, the relationship between elephants and humans can be a sensitive subject, so Stirton needed to strike a balance between respecting thousand-year-old traditions and advocating for the elephants’ safety. Annual festivals where the venerated animals are paraded down streets are the pride of some communities—so much so that they don’t see the stress elephants face, Stirton says.

Still, the photographer hopes his work contributes to better understanding of elephants.

“Elephants are complicated, sentient creatures. We need more research, and we need more support for that research,” Stirton says. “I hope people will understand that we need greater tolerance and that we need greater planning for development.” 

What’s featured on the cover and in the story?

The May cover shows a close-up of a few elephants and their long trunks, but what viewers may not realize is that these male elephants are actually at a garbage dump in Sri Lanka. The small island nation has the second largest population of Asian elephants in the world—and they’ve gotten used to living in close quarters with humans. 

“Their environment and their range is that much smaller … so sometimes there’s nowhere for them to go,” Stirton says. 

Wild elephants come from the nearby national parks where they live, Stirton says, to this garbage dump, which is filled with discarded fruit and vegetables. In describing a scene that sums up the state of Asian elephants, he mentions a small hotel not far from the dump where tourists come to marvel at the elephants eating garbage. 

But in addition to shining a light on elephants’ living conditions, Stirton felt it was important to include people’s stories: those working in conservation and those trying to coexist with elephants. 

He met people injured by elephants who still humbly took the blame, one musing, “It’s our fault; we’re in their place.” Another man whose home was damaged when an elephant knocked a wall down told Stirton that his community had been forcibly moved to the animal’s habitat during the Sri Lankan civil war. 

Most people now try to coexist with elephants, including farmers who build electric fences and watchtowers to make sure elephants don’t eat and destroy their crops. And the elephants have shown their intelligence by carefully moving those fence posts to access food.  

The image that stuck with Stirton the most, though, is one of a young boy in Sri Lanka reaching out to a dead elephant calf, distraught that it had been injured by an improvised explosive concealed in edible bait.

“It was quite moving, because you make an assumption that it’s an us-versus-them situation, but it isn’t. A lot of people care deeply about elephants, even though they make their lives very difficult,” Stirton says.

What’s next for the photographer?

Stirton wants to go back where he started and cover the secrets of the gorillas, another highly endangered animal on the African continent. He also wants to encourage a “holistic take” on planetary health where humans, animals, and the environment are three rivers flowing next to one another rather than existing in isolation.