Great Elephant Census

The idea of a modern census was devised by Elephants Without Borders and supported, both financially and logistically, by Paul G. Allen.

It was also supported by other organizations and individuals, including African Parks, Frankfurt Zoological Society, Wildlife Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group, Howard Frederick, Mike Norton-Griffith, Kevin Dunham, Chris Touless, and Curtice Griffin with the report released in September 2016.

Chase lead a group of 90 scientists and 286 crew in 18 African countries for over two years to collect the data.

During this time the team flew a distance of over 500,000 kilometres (310,686 mi), equivalent to flying to the moon and a quarter of the way back, in over 10,000 hours of collecting data.

Data collected showed a 30 percent decline in the population of African savanna elephant in 15 of the 18 countries surveyed.