Counting the Jumbos

While perusing this AFP piece about a poaching bust in the Central African Republic, we stopped and mumbled "hmmmmm" upon reading this hard-to-swallow stat:

Experts say some 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks.

Really? That seems like such a ridiculously high figure; at that clip, wouldn't the species (or, to be precise, the genus) be entirely extinct before the next Summer Olympics, if not sooner?

As it turns out, African elephants are seemingly much more plentiful