The hard work of elephant conservation is paying off
From our UK edition
The death of Craig the elephant, one of Africa’s last great 'super tuskers', at the beginning of the year was both sad and inspiring. Given the era he lived through, when elephants like him were being killed in vast numbers, his longevity was a conservation success to celebrate. Super tuskers are now vanishingly rare not because they are evolutionary curiosities but because for a long time now, elephants with the largest tusks have been selectively targeted. Across Africa, an estimated 1.3 million elephants were reduced to around 600,000 between the late 1970s and late 1980s.
