Citizen Zoo’s Rewilding Podcast
Jun 30, 2026 · 31 min · 9 segments
This month, join Lucas, Elliot and Digby for an in-depth chat about wild elephants within a European context and their upcoming introduction to Portugal. On the other side of the world they discuss…
Elliot NewtonHost
Digby WheelerHostLucas RizeaultHostOkay, so our first story brings us to Europe, where we are going to talk about elephants.
We certainly are, and this is a momentous story that's sending a deep rumble of excitement through the continent.
The organization, Pangea Trust, is re-homing two former captive elephants into an expansive and naturalistic enclosure in the Alentejo region of Portugal.
Let's talk about some of the extent species of elephants around the world to begin with.
Well, again, I imagine everybody knows what an elephant is, but around the world we currently have three different distinct species of elephant, and one that we all probably all think of, which is the largest living mammal on the planet in terms of land living mammal, is the African savanna elephant.
These are huge animals, right? They can weigh up to, you know, 7,000 kilograms plus.
We then have, uh, a slightly smaller species of African elephant, which is the African forest elephant, which was only actually, uh, described as a separate species back in 2010, and they're found in the dense tropical rainforests of Central and Western Africa, particularly the Congo Basin, and they're smaller so they can move around those sort of, those sort of more confined environments easier.
And the last species of elephant that's currently existing on our planet is the Asian elephant.
An interesting thing about the Asian elephants, there's a number of subspecies, but generally speaking, unlike the African species of elephant, where both the males and females have tusks, generally speaking, the Asian elephants, it's just the males that have tusks.
And why are we talking about elephants in the European context? This might be unusual for many, uh, listeners.
Okay, so our first story brings us to Europe, where we are going to talk about elephants.
We certainly are, and this is a momentous story that's sending a deep rumble of excitement through the continent.
The organization, Pangea Trust, is re-homing two former captive elephants into an expansive and naturalistic enclosure in the Alentejo region of Portugal.
Let's talk about some of the extent species of elephants around the world to begin with.
Well, again, I imagine everybody knows what an elephant is, but around the world we currently have three different distinct species of elephant, and one that we all probably all think of, which is the largest living mammal on the planet in terms of land living mammal, is the African savanna elephant.
These are huge animals, right? They can weigh up to, you know, 7,000 kilograms plus.
We then have, uh, a slightly smaller species of African elephant, which is the African forest elephant, which was only actually, uh, described as a separate species back in 2010, and they're found in the dense tropical rainforests of Central and Western Africa, particularly the Congo Basin, and they're smaller so they can move around those sort of, those sort of more confined environments easier.
And the last species of elephant that's currently existing on our planet is the Asian elephant.
An interesting thing about the Asian elephants, there's a number of subspecies, but generally speaking, unlike the African species of elephant, where both the males and females have tusks, generally speaking, the Asian elephants, it's just the males that have tusks.
And why are we talking about elephants in the European context? This might be unusual for many, uh, listeners.
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