Driving one day with Soila Sayialel, Moss's project manager, we spot Robert, a 38-year-old bull. Earlier that day he had wandered along the road to Amboseli's airstrip, blocking tourist buses on the way to a flight. "If they donÍt find any females to mate with, they want to prove how strong they are in other ways," says Sayialel. Robert has spotted a herd of six females and three calves and is striking out toward them across a meadow of lush green grass. He moves from cow to cow, sniffing each one to see if she is in heat. No luck, so he slowly breaks away from the group toward two buffalo lying in the midday heat. They rise and eye Robert warily. He stands for a few minutes as if to let them know who's boss and then moves off toward the airstrip road again.

Moss encourages other researchers to visit Amboseli and offers 10-day courses in elephant-observation techniques. Students have come from Ethiopia, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. That helps Moss achieve one of her main goals: to get Africans involved in the conservation of their wildlife.

Her most accomplished protÚgÚs, in fact, are her three Kenyan assistants: Sayialel, 37; her sister Katito, 28; and training coordinator Norah Njiraini, 38. All three say they were shy around other people and scared of elephants when they joined the project. Now they lecture tourist groups and drive around the park daily to record elephant positions, family structures, births and deaths. Their work is all the more impressive when you consider the women's background. Soila and Katito are from the Masai tribe, one of the most fiercely tradition-bound in Kenya. When their mother insisted the girls attend school, their father refused. He wanted to marry them off so he could collect the bridal price: a dozen or so cows and perhaps a few bags of sugar. But their strong-willed mother appealed to the local chief; when she got her way, the couple separated. "Now my whole community is proud of me," says Soila. "Sometimes my father comes to me and says, 'I educated you.' But we know it was really my mother."

Listening to the women talk about elephants, identifying the families with codes, is like eavesdropping on gossiping friends. "The AAs are gentle. They mind their own business," says Moss, sitting under a thatch-roofed cabana in her camp, which nestles in a grove of Phoenix palms. "The RAs are a bit neurotic, confusing. But the MBs are very independent." "What about the OAs?" I ask, sneaking into the conversation. The women laugh. "They're a little boring," says Soila. "Not much character." "It has to do with the matriarch's personality," says Moss. "Of course, talking about elephants in this way is not scientifically acceptable to many people, but without using such words, we have a hard time describing what we observe."

Is there a favorite bull? I ask. "There are more bulls we donÍt like than cows we don't like," says Moss. Everyone nods. "But what about M22, Dionysus?" asks Njiraini. Moss's face lights up: "So nice. Just a total gentleman — dignified, calm, reasonable, tall and handsome. M22 is the only bull I've seen who goes to the front of a female and strokes her face before he mates her. Even males seem attracted to him, as if they're in awe of him."

Amboseli's elephants used to raise the ire of the Masai, who are slowly leaving behind their traditional nomadic existence and settling in small villages to farm. Elephants compete for food with the Masai's precious cows and will occasionally kill a cow or goat. When that happened in the past, young Masai warriors usually sought revenge. But after a series of elephant killings a few years ago, Moss and her assistants helped develop a solution: a "consolation" scheme in which Masai are given $210 for every cow killed by an elephant and $70 for every sheep or goat killed. "Now people are beginning to look positively at elephants," says Daniel Leturesh, a local Masai leader. "We benefit if tourists come here to look at the elephants, and if we lose an animal, we also benefit."

But the battle to save elephants will never end so long as humans value ivory. African countries have been collecting tusks from animals who died naturally or were culled from herds, and last year the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species allowed one-time sales from some stockpiles. In April cites will consider widening the now limited trade or closing it again altogether. Kenya and several other nations use armed patrols to guard elephants, but the patrols can't be everywhere all the time. Anecdotal evidence suggests that poaching has increased since last year's ivory sales. "Even if elephant numbers have recovered, there is nothing new since the horrors of the '80s to stop the ivory trade," says Moss. "Laws are just as lax, African wildlife departments are even more poorly funded, and corruption is worse."

Moss's mission as an elephant advocate often takes her away from the Amboseli fieldwork she loves so much. She spends about three-quarters of her time writing, giving lectures in the U.S. and raising money, much of which comes from the African Wildlife Foundation in Washington. An updated version of Elephant Memories should be out in May, and sheÍs working on a major volume of new papers by scientists who have studied the Amboseli elephants. She is also trying to build a $5 million to $7 million endowment, the African Elephant Conservation Trust. That would help give elephants permanent protection — and let her spend more time with her big-eared friends.

One night in camp, after a shower in a wooden cubicle offering a stunning view of the stars, Moss contemplates why she never tires of watching elephants. "If you sit at an airport and watch the people, it's interesting but only two-dimensional. If you sit and watch people you know, say, at a family gathering, you see the uncle who lent some money but was never paid back, and you know all the family quarrels. It becomes so three-dimensional when you have all that history, so much more interesting. I don't think I could ever leave this place." She has become one of the family.