This story appears in the August 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine. The royalty of India—Hindu and Muslim—understood long ago that power was best wielded from the back of an elephant.

This story appears in the March 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine. The intricate web of cracks and crevices that gives African elephants their distinctive look is, in fact, an essential ...

This story appears in the October 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. IN JANUARY 2012 ... SLAUGHTERING HUNDREDS OF ELEPHANTS—entire families—in one of the worst concentrated killings ...

This story appears in the June 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine. I’ve come back ... past rows of shackled elephants, their trunks swaying. I was here five hours before, when the ...

This story appears in the August 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. Fewer than 200 were ... the park also harbors almost 1,300 wild elephants; 1,800 Asiatic wild water buffalo, the ...

This story appears in the June 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. Because the wedding ... No one could afford an elephant or the lavishly saddled horses that would have been ceremonially ...

This story appears in the January 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. AT SUNSET THE WILDEBEEST ... 191 vultures died after feasting on an elephant that had been poached and then sprinkled ...

Peter Gwin is an editor at large for National Geographic and cohost of the award-winning podcast Overheard. He began as a staff writer for the magazine in 2003, and has contributed stories from an ...