The alarming plight of the African elephant is the focus of a new documentary, Battle For The Elephants, set to premiere on February 27th. Fueled by the insatiable Chinese desire for ivory, and the rapid growth of their middle class, the demand for ivory has led to an explosion of poachers, a thriving market for illegal ivory, and a threat that we could soon lose the world’s largest land mammal forever. Consider the words of documentary director John Heminway, “If the current situation remains the status quo, we are facing the very real possibility that elephants living in the wild will go extinct in the coming decades.” Not convinced? In 1800, there were an estimated 20 million elephants in Africa. A century later that number was cut in half. Today, there are less than 500,000 elephants in Africa, most under the threat of a poachers rifle.