Aerial Census of African Elephants Shows Severe Decline
COSTELLO: For decades the population of African elephants has been largely guesswork. Beginning around 2007, a large upswing in poaching of illegal ivory, driven by demand in China, hammered the most common Savannah elephant species. But until now nobody knew just how bad it was. I want to warn you, some of the pictures you are about to see are extremely disturbing. CNN's David McKenzie has our exclusive report from Botswana.</s>DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Getting ready to fly in Botswana's far North. Elephant Ecologist, Mike Chase has spent years counting Savannah elephants from the sky.</s>MIKE CHASE, ELEPHANT ECOLOGIST: Never before have we ever conducted a standardized survey for African elephants at a continental scale.</s>CHASE: All right, start counting. I see my side more than 20 (ph).</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): Hundreds of air crew counted elephants in 18 countries across the continent over two years.</s>CHASE: Elephants seven. Seven elephants, right? (ph)</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): Flying the distance to the moon and then some. Their results more shocking than anyone imagined.</s>CHASE: We've spent thousands of hours of counting. Flying over areas where elephants historically occurred (ph) but are no longer present in these habitats.</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): Killed for their ivory, in seven short years up to 2014, elephant numbers dropped by a staggering amount, almost one-third. Across Africa their numbers are crashing. If nothing changes, the elephant population will halve in less than a decade. In some areas they will go extinct.</s>CHASE: Some landscapes we saw both dead elephants and live elephants.</s>MCKENZIE: It seems like there's a disturbing uptake in the poaching on the borders of Botswana and Namibia. And this bull was killed, it seems, just a few days ago, even.</s>CHASE: Three days.</s>MCKENZIE: Three days max. And you can smell it all the way from here.</s>CHASE: Wow, he was spectacular.</s>MCKENZIE: Look how big he was, it's awful.</s>CHASE: In fact, not even three days. And there you have a clear evidence with his face hacked away like that. That he met his end with people chopping away at his tusks.</s>MCKENZIE: And you've grown up in this country, you are from Botswana. What is it like to see these magnificent beasts killed like this?</s>CHASE: I don't think anybody in the world has seen the number of dead elephants that I've seen over the last two years of the great elephant census. And for me this becomes a lot more personal.</s>UNKNOWN SOLDIER: We will continue to check point two.</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): To fight the war, Botswana has mobilized the army. With more than 700 troops guarding its Northern border. Patrols spend days in the bush on foot, armed with a shoot to kill policy for poachers. They're up against a sophisticated enemy.</s>MCKENZIE: So they're looking for any sign of poachers. If they come across them they're often highly organized groups of about 12 people. Two of them could be shooters, often. And those shooters are frequently foreign special forces.</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): Mike Chase's research proves that if we can't protect elephants they will learn to protect themselves.</s>MCKENZIE: They can hear him snoring ...</s>CHASE: Uh-huh, yeah.</s>MCKENZIE: Is it a he or she?</s>CHASE: He. He's in his prime, about 30 to 35 years of age. And it's these young bulls that have the propensity to move dramatic distances and map (ph) their transboundary conservation corridors.</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): But they're satellite tracking shows that the elephants use incredible levels of intelligence to avoid poaching hotspots in neighboring countries. Retreating to the relative safety within Botswana.</s>MCKENZIE: It's quite incredible being this close to this animal.</s>CHASE: It is. It certainly is.</s>MCKENZIE (voice-over): We called this bull "Promise," for the promise that Mike Chase has made, and perhaps we all should, to save this magnificent species.</s>COSTELLO: Our thanks to David McKenzie for that report. Still to come in the Newsroom, the long forbidden island now much less of a mystery. History made today as passenger flights between the United States and Cuba return to the skies.