Here is the chart from the New York Times:

LONDON (Reuters) - A new jumbo birth control drug is helping veterinarians in South Africa solve a huge problem -- too many elephants, the journal Nature reported Wednesday. Many African countries are worried about too few elephants but the pachyderms in South Africa's Kruger National Park are so prolific that conservationists have had to cull some of them to keep their numbers stable and preserve their habitat.

Richard Fayrer-Hosken and his colleagues at the University of Georgia in Athens have developed a contraceptive vaccine that is safe and controls free-roaming African elephants, Nature reported.

The pig-derived (pZP) vaccine causes the elephant's immune system to produce antibodies that prevent fertilization.

When the researchers vaccinated 20 free-roaming elephants in the Kruger park and tracked them a year later there were fewer pregnancies in the vaccinated elephants than in an equal number of animals given a placebo vaccine.

``Our immunocontraceptive study shows that free-roaming African elephants vaccinated with pZP are protected against conception,'' Fayrer-Hosken said in the journal.

The vaccine had no side effects and was not harmful to a developing fetus in a pregnant elephant that was mistakenly vaccinated, he said.

The researchers added that the effects of the vaccine are reversible and it does not damage the ovaries or the reproductive cycle.

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