Elephants are majestic creatures, but years of poaching and habitat destruction have had a devastating effect on their population size, pushing many species to the brink of extinction.

The Independent, for example, previously reported that African elephants are at risk of being wiped out completely because of the damage that environmentally destructive practices like meat-eating are doing to our planet.

However, amid this bad news, there is also hope, and there has recently been a baby elephant boom in Kenya, which has included the birth of rare elephant twins.

In the video below, elephants protect their young from wild dogs:

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Kenya's Amboseli National Park saw 140 baby elephants born in this year's calving season.

"It has been a difficult year for all of us but there is still much to celebrate," said Winnie Kiiru, speaking for the Elephant Protection Initiative in a statement cited by The Times. "Here in Amboseli, elephants are thriving. 140 beautiful calves have been born in 2020 and more are expected."

This dramatic increase in elephant numbers is no accident and is the culmination of hard work that has resulted in the country's elephant population doubling from 1989 to the present day, the BBC reports, citing a statement released by the Kenya Wildlife Service on Wednesday.

Kenya's tourism minister, Najib Balala, said: "In the past couple of years, we have managed to tame poaching in this country."

"This year alone, about 170 elephant calves have been born."

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This good news coincided with World Elephant Day on August 12, with the inclusion of rare elephant twins in this year's newborn tally being a particular cause for celebration.

In an interview with AA News this week, Cynthia Moss, director of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, said: "It seems baby elephants are falling out of the sky. The ability of a female to conceive and carry a calf to term depends greatly on her own physical condition."

This year has been so successful in terms of births because of heavy rainfall. It has led to an abundance of vegetation, which means that there is plenty of food to give the baby elephants the best possible start in life.

The Niassa reserve in Mozambique, one of Africa's largest wildlife preserves, has gone a full year without any of its elephants being killed by poachers.

Indeed, the last recorded killing of an elephant by a poacher was on May 17, 2018.

The preserve, which just a year ago, had less than 2,000 elephants, now holds approximately 4,000 elephants.

This is the heartwarming moment a baby elephant rushes to save a man swimming in a river:

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In recent times, the Mozambique government has introduced measures geared at increasing its elephant population and allowing it to flourish.

For instance, a dedicated police force was set up to protect the mammals, and better patrolling has been put in place, according to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the reserve along with Mozambique's government

"It is a remarkable achievement," Wildlife Conservation Society country director James Bampton told The Associated Press.

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"The new rapid intervention police force is an elite unit that is better-armed than the reserve's normal rangers," Bampton said, before adding that no "bad incidents" had been reported in Niassa.

This new strategy allows the force to arrest any suspected poachers in a way that is quicker and more efficient.

According to Bampton, "just being caught with a firearm is considered intent to illegal hunting," and is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 16 years.

However, while there has been a significant reduction in the poaching of elephants - to the extent that none were killed in the past year - experts are saying that the current death rate of African elephants is still greater than the birth rate.

Based on estimates, Africa's elephant population has plummeted from several million in 1900 to approximately 415,000 today.

Correction

We reported that Kenya is planning to introduce the death penalty for convicted wildlife poachers. This included a quote from Tourism Minister Najib Balala given to China’s Xinhua news agency, during a meeting held on May 10, 2018. However, Balala was not at that meeting, and told AFP Africa there was no such plan.

We want to make clear that this was an editorial error and apologize profusely to our readers for this.

At VT we take false news very seriously and want to assure all our readers that our articles are fact-checked strenuously before publishing.

Poaching is one of the world's least divisive issues. Almost everyone would agree that endangered animals should be allowed to live in peace - and roam their natural habitats without humans endangering their lives.

However, it remains a huge issue in African countries - including Kenya - where animals such as rhinos and elephants are targeted for their horns and tusks for alternative medicine and ivory, respectively. But the government is taking drastic steps to stem the bloodshed.

"We have in place the Wildlife Conservation Act that was enacted in 2013 and which fetches offenders a life sentence or a fine of U.S. $200,000," Cabinet Secretary for Tourism Najib Balala told China’s Xinhua news agency. "However, this has not been deterrence enough to curb poaching, hence the proposed stiffer sentence."

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In 2017, poachers killed nine rhinos and 69 elephants - cancelling out the growth rate of their populations. The number of black rhinos in the country is now below 1,000. Balala added that the law to see poachers face the death penalty, while not yet enacted, was being fast-tracked.

“Across the continent’s diverse wild lands, management authorities need data-driven solutions to enhance anti-poaching capacity to allow remaining priority populations to recover from previous, and current, crises," stated the African Wildlife Foundation.

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"Meanwhile," they continue, "community-level interventions must explore different economic opportunities that secure rather than destroy biodiversity as pressure on natural resources grows with increasing development, infrastructure, and urbanisation.”

Ghana, home to animals as diverse as lions, elephants and monkeys, is seeing the rapid spread of human life - as the metropolis leaches into the countryside. But the main problem here, as it is in large swathes of Africa, is traffic. Meetings and functions usually start 45 minutes late and locals joke that "GMT" stands for "Ghana Maybe Time".

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In 2005, there were 159,000 registered vehicles in the country. Just 10 years later, there were already 890,000. Inevitably, as well as the impact on humans, wildlife is affected too - unless the animal in question is lucky enough to live on a protected wildlife reserve.

“Not only can KWS [Kenya Wildlife Service] catch wildlife criminals but now they have the capacity to ensure those criminals are convicted under Kenya’s robust laws," stated Max Graham of Space for Giants. "A ranger in the field should not have to experience the frustration of confronting a wildlife criminal they arrested a week earlier walking free again because of an acquittal. This is a critical step up in the battle against the illegal wildlife trade."

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However, as to whether Kenya's decisive steps to protect wildlife are progressive is up for discussion. The United Nations (UN) opposes the death penalty. The UN General Assembly has recommended a phasing-out of capital punishment and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights advocates its abolition worldwide.

Furthermore, the idea that poachers enjoy what they do is misconceived. In many cases, it may be the only way they can provide for their families - creating a difficult moral dilemma for those tasked with policing the situation.

Kenya’s tourism chiefs say that the number of poaching incidents has reduced thanks to investment in conservation and wildlife law enforcement. These individuals, dubbed wildlife "bodyguards", also helped to publicise the desperate fight against poaching.

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“These efforts led to an 85 per cent reduction in rhino poaching and a 78 per cent reduction in elephant poaching, respectively, in 2017 compared to when poaching was at its peak in 2013 and 2012 respectively,” the ministry said.

"At current poaching rates, elephants, rhinos and other iconic African wildlife may be gone within our lifetime,” the African Wildlife Foundation states. They add that poachers “use high-powered technology and weaponry to track and kill many animals at once without being detected.”

However, conservationists are also turning to technological methods. Certain Kenyan rangers have started using thermal and infrared cameras in the hopes of spotting poachers before they spot their targets.

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“In the past, we would never have found these people,” explains Brian Heath, who runs the conservation group the Mara Conservancy. “Now the poachers are saying it’s just not worth going out because the chance of getting caught is getting higher and higher. It has been a big deterrent. In other areas, like South Africa where most rhinos live, dozens of rhinos have actually been airlifted out of poaching-prone areas and into safer locales, like Botswana, where poaching is rare.”

Vietnam has typically been thought of as the dominant market for rhino horn, while up to 70 per cent of illegal ivory ends up in China, where it sells for up to $1,000 a pound. But there are also tonnes of it in the west, forming a burgeoning antique ivory market. That said, its future - at least as a legal trade - looks increasingly uncertain.

While not divisive as a conversation topic, poaching remains an important source of income for some of the world's most impoverished people. Unfortunately, the issue isn't straightforward and enacting the death penalty will be seen by many not as a step forward, but a step back.

If you would like to help protect endangered species, you can donate to Drive4Wildlife - a conservation group formed of three brothers from Britain's Paradise Wildlife Park who recently travelled through Africa to get a better perspective on the issue of poaching

Dubbed the 'world's most prolific hunter', Tony Sanchez-Arino has boasted of slaughtering 1,317 elephants and 340 lions while posing with carcasses in what many deem to be 'sickening' photos.

The 89-year-old from Spain has also killed 2,093 buffalos, 167 leopards, and 127 black rhinos.

He is widely celebrated by fans of the blood sport as being the world's "most dangerous and experienced game hunter".

This is the moment Piers Morgan rages at a big game hunter on Good Morning Britain:

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Over the course of 60 years, the big game hunter has killed at least 4,000 animals in Africa, having started professional ivory hunting back in 1952.

Despite personally contributing to the decimation of thousands of wild animals, Sanchez-Arino has bizarrely expressed concern over the fact that the numbers of African elephants are in rapid decline.

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"The African elephant will be hunted to extinction in the wild within our lifetime, to the shame of humanity," he remarked in his 2002 book Elephants, Ivory, And Hunters.

Sanchez-Arino is a friend of former Spanish King Juan Carlos who was dropped as honorary president of the country’s World Wildlife Fund branch after it emerged he had killed elephants.

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According to an alarming report by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, hunting for ivory from elephants has increased twelve-fold over the past three decades.

As a result, elephant populations have dropped exponentially from around 1.3million to just 400,000.

Eduardo Gonçalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, says:

"The trophy hunting industry is slaughtering elephants left, right and center. Killing elephants for fun is unacceptable, even more so because of the seriousness of the current crisis. The recent surge in elephant hunting shows that the industry is out of control."

The government of Botswana has made the controversial choice to lift the national ban on elephant hunting, first introduced in 2014 by then-president Ian Khama, The Washington Post report.

The Botswana Democratic Party has justified the move by claiming that the local pachyderm population has recently increased, which has had a negative impact on farmers.

In a statement on Wednesday, Botswana’s Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism said the committee determined that with the Khama's hunting suspension in place, "human-elephant conflict and the consequent impact on livelihoods was increasing."

President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who succeeded Khama in April of 2018,  has vowed to ensure that elephant hunting is carried out in a responsible and ethical manner, but many environmentalist groups have been left incensed by this reversal.

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Commenting on the new legislation, Audrey Delsink, director of Humane Society International, stated:

"This horrifying decision by Botswana to lift its ban on elephant hunting will send shock waves throughout the conservation world. There are around 415,000 wild elephants in the whole of Africa, where they are relentlessly persecuted by trophy hunters and poachers, and Botswana is home to one-third of those elephants who have sought refuge within its borders. This population is vital to the overall regional survival of this iconic species."

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She added:

"Resuming elephant hunting is not only morally questionable and flies in the face of all international efforts to protect these giants, but it will also likely damage Botswana's hugely valuable tourism industry because visitors will be appalled at the idea that the very elephants they are photographing on eco-safaris could be gunned down by hunters the next day ... Elephants are worth far more to us all alive than dead.'"

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Botswana has the largest population of African elephants on the continent, boasting more than 135,000 in its national parks. Experts claim that their population has tripled over the last three decades as a result of various conservationist movements.