(CBS News) NAIROBI, Kenya -- There is an elephant poaching crisis in Africa: 25,000 are killed a year.
There is, however, one place of hope near Nairobi.
The orphaned elephants there are getting a second chance at life thanks to their "foster mother," Dame Daphne Sheldrick.
"We try to replicate what that baby elephant would have had in the wild, the most important being a family," Sheldrick said.
Sheldrick has lived among elephants for nearly 60 years and started the orphanage in the 1970s when poaching elephants for their tusks became an international crisis.
Over the years, she's discovered elephants share many traits with humans: A long life span, mourning of their dead, and strong family bonds. That's led to new techniques for raising elephants in captivity.
"So we have a team of keepers that represent the elephant family that they've lost. And here in the nursery, the keepers and the attendants are with the little orphans 24 hours a day, because a baby elephant in a natural situation would never ever be left on its own and all the family care for that baby," Sheldrick said.
Read on: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57561441/a-place-of-hope-amid-the-elephant-poaching-crisis/
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