When Luggard was one year old, a poacher shot his mother dead for her tusks in a Kenyan national park. The little elephant was also shot in a leg.
Half a year later, caretakers at a Nairobi elephant orphanage are treating the infected wound and rearing Luggard in order to eventually release him into the wild.
Whenever an elephant is orphaned in Kenya, often as the result of poaching, rangers alert The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust running the orphanage.
There are now 25 elephants at the orphanage, all of whom will stay there until age 5.
“We feed them with milk every three hours, day and night,” says caretaker Edwin Lusichi.
The effort to save every orphan reflects concerns about the future of African elephants.
The subject is expected to spark a heated debate at a meeting of the Convention on Illegal Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) opening today in Johannesburg.
Twenty-seven years after a global ivory ban against poaching first bolstered Africa’s elephant populations, Zimbabwe and Namibia are seeking permission to trade in ivory again, a proposal that worries The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
The world is facing nothing less than an “elephant holocaust” due to a new upsurge in poaching, trust spokeswoman Amie Alden said by e-mail.
Those opposing the Zimbabwean and Namibian proposal point to the widest elephant census so far, published in the run-up to the conference, which showed African elephants to be even more endangered than had been thought.
The continent may have held more than 20mn elephants prior to European colonisation, and 1mn as recently as the 1970s. But the 18 countries covered by the census now only contain about 350,000 savannah elephants.
The decline is due to loss of habitat, conflict with humans and isolation of populations.
But the study pointed primarily to poaching, which surged around 2005 and kills an average of 30,000 elephants annually.
In Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, poaching reduced the number of elephants from 110,000 to 15,000 in four decades, according to World Wildlife Fund.
Mozambique is also experiencing large-scale losses, and some West African countries with small and isolated elephant populations could lose them altogether, experts warn.
Poaching has risen due to increased affluence in China -  one of the main markets for decorative ivory carvings - coupled with corruption among some African officials not enforcing the ban, said WWF’s Colman O’Criodain.
Ivory is currently priced at about $1,100 dollars per kilo in China and Vietnam, according to the organisation Pro Wildlife.
Zimbabwe and Namibia want their relatively large elephant populations -  estimated at 80,000 and 25,000 respectively - exempted from the ban, with officials saying the herds are thriving.
Selling ivory from elephants which died of natural causes, they argue, would generate resources to fight poachers.
Zimbabwe has a stockpile of 96 tons of ivory, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa told parliament.
The proceeds from sales would help the cash-strapped country repay its $10bn debt, the government argues.
The trade ban has already been slightly relaxed for Zimbabwe,
Namibia, South Africa - all of which allow wealthy foreign hunters to shoot elephants for trophies - and Botswana, which are allowed to export elephant trophies and live elephants.
Advocates for ivory trade legalisation argue it would help abolish the thriving black market.
Opponents counter that it would popularise ivory carvings, fuelling demand for cheaper black market products.
Zimbabwe and Namibia’s bid to trade in ivory is opposed by 29 African countries which want to place all elephants under the strictest possible ban after the current moratorium expires in 2017.
But there is also concern that a stricter ban could backfire if it prompts countries opposing it to enter a so-called reservation, a move allowed by CITES rules.
“They would become non-parties to CITES as far as elephants are concerned, and could do what they like,” O’Criodain said.
Environmentalists fear that would encourage poaching on the heels of some success against it.
In Kenya, the number of poached elephants dropped to 96 in 2015 from 384 in 2012, according to Kenya Wildlife Service.
The number of wildlife rangers was increased by 500 to about 2,000 last year, while 105 tons of ivory were set on fire in April.
In general terms, poaching has declined slightly since 2012, but it still kills more elephants than are born each year, O’Criodain said.