Africa's Savanna Elephants in Trouble

Inside NATURE on PBS

Today (August 12th) is World Elephant Day and we thought there was no better time to take a look at the state of Africa’s elephants. To find out how they are doing we spoke with Mike Chase, conversation biologist and founder of the non-profit organization Elephants Without Borders. Starting in 2014, Mike lead the Great Elephant Census, a groundbreaking two-year study that attempted to count, with great accuracy, all of Africa’s savanna elephants. What he found was startling. Over the previous seven years, elephant populations had declined by an astonishing 30 percent, mostly due to poaching. Mike spoke to us about the study from a remote research station in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. You can read a transcript of the podcast on the NATURE website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/?post_type=blog&p=15433&preview=true