The Elephant Species and Habitat Conservation Area in Da Nang, Vietnam, has an adorable new herd member. According to Vietnam Plus, a baby Asian elephant of about one year old has been spotted by cameras in the area. It was seen walking alongside its protective mother.

Asian elephants are considered endangered, so the sighting is welcome news for the species, bringing the herd in the conservation area to nine. Another baby was spotted in 2020.

“Today, only about 400,000 African elephants remain in the wild, down from an estimated 12 million in the early 1900s,” Tata Power reported. “Asian elephants are even fewer, roughly 40,000.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund, one of the main threats to Asian elephants is habitat loss and fragmentation, which pushes them into smaller and smaller areas.

This leads to more human-elephant conflict, another threat. When elephants destroy crops or injure or kill people, they often meet deadly consequences. Additionally, because elephants live in isolated groups, they are threatened with being eradicated by disease, inbreeding, and disaster.

And while the ivory trade affects African elephants more than Asian elephants, the latter is still poached for the ivory from male elephants as well as skin and meat.

The birth of baby elephants in conservation areas is cause for celebration because it shows the resiliency of the creatures and serves as a sign of hope for the people who work endlessly to guard them. It also shows the benefit of trail cameras, which can be used to gauge the health of this majestic species as well as others.

Vietnam Plus said the baby is “an encouraging sign of natural reproduction.”

World Elephant Day is Aug. 12. This year’s theme is Matriarchs and Memories to honor mother elephants, matriarchs of herds, and the women who fight to protect and preserve elephants.

“They mourn their dead. They recognize themselves in mirrors. They remember waterholes from decades past. And they never forget a friend or a threat,” Daryl Hannah says in the campaign video introducing this year’s theme.

Tata Power explained that the theme encourages people to “guard both the wise female leaders guiding every herd and the stories etched in their minds.”

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