World Elephant Day on August 12 celebrates these gentle giants. 

Where in 1930 there were as many as 10 million wild elephants in Africa, today there are only about 415,000 across the whole continent. 

In the past two decades, conflicts between humans and elephants have led to significant elephant population declines in both Africa and Asia. 

As their natural habitat shrinks, elephants raid crops which often results in retaliatory killings of these endangered mammals. 

Many elephants are also poached for their tusks, despite a ban on the international ivory trade since 1989. 

The IUCN estimates that about 111,000 African elephants - a fifth of the total population - were lost between 2006 and 2015. The majority were illegally killed for ivory.

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