Warning: graphic content

August 30, 2006—Chad's Zakouma National Park is one of the last elephant strongholds in central Africa and is home to between 3,500 and 4,000 of the animals. The heavily patrolled park is key to their survival, but its officials can't protect elephants that stray outside park boundaries.

From August 3 to 11 a team led by Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist on assignment for National Geographic magazine, found fresh carcasses of a hundred slaughtered elephants—evidence of a major poaching problem near the park's borders (read the full news story).

Watch video and animated stills of Fay's discovery, including his team's encounter with armed horsemen who might have been responsible for the killings.