Madagascar (TV series) in March 2011. In this one-off programme, David Attenborough undertakes a personal journey back to Madagascar to investigate the fate of "Aepyornis", the island's extinct elephant birds. Believed to be the largest birds which have ever lived, evidence of their existence can still be found on the island. Whilst filming "Zoo Quest to Madagascar" in 1961, Attenborough pieced together a complete elephant bird egg from fragments of shell collected for him. "Madagascar" was first announced in March 2009 as a partnership between Animal Planet and BBC Worldwide. Production duties were handled by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, with
African bush elephant have been extinct by 1995. The protection the elephant now receives has been partially successful, but despite increasingly severe penalties imposed by governments against illegal hunting, poaching is still common. CITES still considers this species as threatened with extinction. The African bush elephant is categorized as a high-risk endangerment animal, with the constant threat of poaching and predators on the rise. With the high demand for ivory in Eastern Asia, the black-market trade network has left the species close to extinction. Poachers target the elephant's tusk for the ivory, and in some cases remove the tusk while the elephant is