The plight of elephants highlighted on World Elephant Day August 12

(11 Aug 2018) LEAD IN : August 12 is World Elephant Day. In Africa, the elephant population has plummeted from millions around 1900, to less than 500, 000 today. STORYLINE: Meet Kenya s elephant orphans. Here at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust near Nairobi, keepers care for these little guys 24 hours a day, as Edwin Lusichi, the project manager and head keeper explains. We have baby elephants and rhinos and they are orphans. They have been orphaned from different parts of the county with different reasons, some of them, their mothers have been killed by poachers due to the trade in ivory. Some have been separated from their families by human beings what we call humanwildlife conflict and very few their mothers have died from natural reasons and if it happens when the babies are still very young, then they cannot survive without their mothers milk and protection. And so we rescue them so that we can hand rear them here, provide all the care that they need, that they