A non-profit organisation is "delighted" Prince Harry is helping to transport 500 elephants across Malawi over the summer.

Prince Harry

Prince Harry

Frances Read from non-profit African Parks has admitted it is a great help to the group that the 31-year-old royal is joining in with the project to move the beasts across the southern African state as part of a 500 Elephants initiative.

She said: "We are delighted that Prince Harry has joined us on this very important project."

While it is not known exactly what part Harry will play in the "human-assisted migration" process, Frances admitted it is a huge task.

She added to PEOPLE: "As you can imagine, everything is on quite a significant scale.

"A helicopter goes up with a vet and they identify a cohesive group of elephants, which is really important because you've got to keep the family groups together. Then they try to flush them out of the woodlands and onto the floodplains, which makes it a lot easier and safer to dart.

"As they are being darted, cars move in on the ground. So as soon as the elephants start to go down there are people to assist and make sure they are breathing properly and are positioned safely, so that they haven't fallen on their chest or against something, or on one another."

The animals are then lifted onto flatbed trucks and workers have no more than two hours to move the beasts until they wake up.

British High Commissioner Micheal Nevin recently confirmed Harry will be in Malawi for "quite a while" while helps move the animals to a wildlife reserve in what will be one of the biggest conservation projects in history.


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