How China can save African elephants

Hardened poachers have killed so many elephants that they can often imitate the screams the animals make when speared. They can tell you how other elephants howl in distress when they see one of their own felled. They know that, to extract a whole tusk, they have to hack off the front of an elephant's face with machetes, axes or chainsaws. Calves have been known to circle the disfigured body of their mother for days in mourning, even until their own death.

Behind the savagery visited on these magnificent, highly sensitive and intelligent creatures lies greed and a desire for shiny objects - sometimes rooted in trend, sometimes tradition. It began with the early white settlers, with ivory becoming one of the great prizes of the colonial era. In recent years, however, demand has skyrocketed to match the rise in global consumer wealth, and poaching has reached an industrial scale.

Over the past decade, poachers have slaughtered more than 100,000 African elephants for their ivory - more than one quarter of the population. Many of the tusks now end up in China and other parts of Asia, where they are turned into trinkets and marketed as status symbols.