... If the rains fail in October and November, we'll go into total crisis. I can't even begin to imagine how awful that would be."
In all, Mr Hamilton's organisation has counted at least 24 elephants that have died over the past two months across Samburu alone.
If the rains fail, we are all in trouble. It's not just going to be the animals dying. We'll die too, and it's not going to take long.
And like most droughts, it is the old and the young that go first.
That is a worrying trend for the conservationists.
The losses on their own would not have much of an impact on the region's elephant populations, but when the old matriarchs die it is potentially devastating.
"If you get a large-scale mortality, and you get a lot of old matriarchs going, you lose the memory banks. That's the lessons the matriarchs have learned from their own mothers about things like where to go for water," Mr Hamilton said.
"If a matriarch dies before those lessons have been handed down, and the new head of the family makes a mistake in a drought like this, its potentially very serious for the entire group."
This drought, of course, is not just about elephants. But they are an indicator species.
What happens to them points to trouble right across the spectrum.
Other less drought-resistant animals like buffalo, warthog, hippopotami and certain species of antelope have been hit hard.
Crocodiles have been forced to migrate sometimes many kilometres in search of water. ...
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