The African savannah elephant was recently classified as Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), citing a decline throughout Africa of 60% over the past 50 years. Yet in Namibia elephant numbers are increasing and their range is expanding; a testament to sound long-term conservation policies. But how do we know that they are increasing? How do you assess the status of an animal that ranges over thousands of square kilometres with any degree of confidence? Gail Thomson spoke to the experts to find out.
The small four-seater Cessna aircraft is full. The pilot is flying slowly in a dead straight line, maintaining an altitude of 300 feet above ground level. Behind him, two passengers stare intently out the windows; searching the ground between two black rods fixed to the plane’s wing struts. One passenger suddenly calls out: “left, elephant bulls, two”, followed shortly by the other: “right, elephant cows, ten in, five out”. The fourth person in the plane, sitting next to the pilot, decodes their cryptic messages and jots them down on a datasheet.
Once they have reached the end of this straight line (known as a transect) on their GPS, the pilot will turn the plane around, find the next parallel transect line and fly back along it – keeping flying speed and height as constant as possible. They keep it up until they have flown a planned number of transects for the morning, at which point
