sam ferreira is an ecologist in kruger park well aware of the difficulties of counting elephants from the air. >> imagine an elephant stands under a tree. you fly over it. the elephant is there but it's not available for you to be sampled and you can't see it. >> reporter: to compensate cameras are mounted on each side of the plane the spotters constantly take pictures. after the flight, the photos are downloaded and used to verify what the spotters have reported. using a special program each elephant is highlighted making it much easier to spot those elephants under the trees. >> this verification helps quite a bit. especially when you have large herds that are mixed. when you go by for just a few minutes so the numbers are really well verified when you count it on the computer. right now i missed an elephant on this one. >> it would be extremely difficult if we didn't have this technology available to us to fly aerial surveys over such a vast scale an area that we're covering. >> reporter: wildlife officials with the botswana government are observing and assisting with the count her