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Monday, September 30, 2013

Losing Loved Ones

So many people don't believe me when I tell them that elephants are just as smart as humans.  But if you look at the science of it, there is no doubt in my mind that elephants have no soul, or that they're stupid. Because, if they're as smart as we humans, they would be just the opposite.  




"There is one universal experience, that's death. That is something we are all going to experience at some distance in the lives of loved ones, strangers and friends, people around us and certainly our own."
Journalist Scott Simon's words are probably some of the most poignant when paired with this heartbreaking photo of an elephant standing guard over her deceased friend.
This incredible photograph was taken by John Chaney as part of the 2012 National Geographic Traveler photo contest. Chaney wrote that the female elephant in the image, which was taken in 2007, stood guard over the body of her friend for hours to pay her respects, chasing off birds and predators. She then wrapped her trunk around the other's tusk in a heartbreaking goodbye.
"I think it should be something we are comfortable talking about," Simon said in August following the death of his mother. "Insofar as we can talk about it comfortably, we can reset the clocks in our own lives. If we can accept death and understand it and know, whether we are 10 or 30 or 60 or 80, that it's just over the horizon."
Sadly, this scene is only reflective of the growing peril African elephants face. The international ivory trade is thriving and poachers are going to extreme lengths to hunt and kill the giants for their tusks. Wildlife conservation groups estimate upwards of 35,000 elephants were killed in 2012.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced a sweeping, $80 million effort to stop elephant slaughter.
"Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years. I can't even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for everyone who shares this planet," she said.

~Nick Visser
Huff Post Green
9-30-13




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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Hooray For Hillary!

Say it together- "HOORAY FOR HILLARY!!!!!"


NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new global effort Thursday to protect Africa’s wild elephants from poaching, part of a long-running personal crusade for the former secretary of state.
Clinton joined the presidents of several African nations and wildlife preservation advocates to unveil an $80 million, three-year program aimed at ending ivory trafficking, including new park guards at major elephant ranges and sniffer-dog teams at global transit points.
The announcement was a centerpiece of the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton family’s annual charitable gathering in New York. In remarks at a Thursday luncheon, Clinton said the slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks had reached crisis proportions.
“Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years,” Clinton said. “I can’t even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values.”
Clinton drew a direct link between terrorism and elephant poaching, citing growing evidence that terrorist groups in Africa are funding their activities in part by trafficking ivory. She said that includes al-Shabab, the group responsible for the recent attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi.
“This is not just about elephants,” Clinton said. “It is about human beings, governments, trying to control their own territory, trying to keep their people safe, as well as protect their cultural and environmental heritage.”
The new program will enable an expanded law enforcement presence at 50 major elephant sites that together harbor 285,000 elephants, or roughly two-thirds of the African population. It also will include the hiring of an additional 3,100 park guards, adding sniffer-dog teams at 10 key international transit points and beefing up intelligence networks.
President Ali Bongo of Gabon was among the leaders who joined Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, onstage for Thursday’s announcement. Elephant poaching, he said, “threatens the very stability of our countries and blocks our economic development. It is time for the global community to act decisively against this plague.”
Gabon and other African nations pledged to increase penalties for killing elephants. Meanwhile, 10 countries — including China, Japan, Vietnam and other Asian nations that are among the biggest consumer markets for ivory — committed to helping reduce the demand among their citizens for the product, including through public education campaigns.
~Philip Rucker
WP Politics
September 26, 2013



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Saturday, September 28, 2013

Happy Animals Make Me Happy!




For some reason, this video made me smile. I love watching animals in rainstorms, and from the looks of it, these elephants are just loving the rain as I do! 

Happy autumn! 




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Friday, September 27, 2013

An Interview With Jeffrey Gettleman

Rhino horn is now worth more than 65,000 dollars per kilogram, more than the price of gold.
Please take the time to watch this interview with Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times reporter regarding the elephant and rhino poaching problem.  
To view the meeting, click here!



(CNN) -- Dzanga Bai is a magical place of natural wonder. It is on the Central African Republic's southwest border with the Republic of Congo and is widely considered the most important gathering place for forest elephants in the entire Congo basin. For decades -- and probably centuries -- elephants by the hundreds from across the region have congregated there, reconnecting with family members and drinking the mineral-rich waters.
Last May, a group of heavily armed men, believed to be linked to the Seleka rebel group, entered Dzanga Bai and slaughtered a reported two dozen elephants.
By the time Dzanga Bai's elephant carcasses were discovered, the perpetrators were gone, leaving in their wake a horrific crime scene of heads carved up for their precious ivory. Tusks like these, typically destined for Asian markets, where growing demand has quickly driven up prices, have in recent years presented a new opportunity for quick cash to finance the operations of armed gangs from the Central African Republic east to Somalia. It is now widely understood that groups ranging from Darfur's Janjaweed to Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army have turned to this revenue source.
"The devastating poaching crisis that has gripped Africa over the past decade has left multiple tragedies in its wake..."
The growth of these groups, with funds from illegal wildlife trafficking, is destabilizing African governments even as it devastates populations of elephants, rhinos and other high value wildlife. Operating through terror and intimidation, roving rebel armies undermine democratic governance and responsible resource management while devastating regional economies through disruptions to tourism and local livelihoods.
In meetings in the United States, Asia and Africa this year, we have listened as leaders have shared their growing anxiety. The new poachers are tied to criminal syndicates. Rifles and machetes have been enhanced or replaced with helicopters, night visions goggles, sophisticated telecommunications and automatic weapons. Local communities are terrified and national governments fear losing large swaths of territory to these gangs.
Out of these conversations has emerged a challenge to the world—from African nations--to stop buying ivory. Representatives of the governments of Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, along with the international nongovernmental organizations we represent, have gathered in New York this week to announce an important commitment through the Clinton Global Initiative. Together, we have three straightforward goals: (1) stop the killing; (2) stop the trafficking; and (3) stop the demand.
To stop the killing and the trafficking, the international community can help states that make up the present range of the African elephant by providing equipment, training and expertise. President Obama recently dedicated $10 million for law enforcement efforts and the creation of a wildlife trafficking task force at the highest levels of the U.S. government, complementing existing U.S. initiatives. European and other nations, along with private citizens, need to join him in committing emergency resources to enforcement efforts in elephant landscapes and ivory trafficking ports.  ports/
Despite a ban on international trade in ivory imposed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in 1989, domestic sales remain legal in a number of countries, including the United States. Because these legal markets can provide a front for laundering illegal ivory into the trade, moratoria on domestic sales of ivory are also a vital part of anti-trafficking efforts.
Stopping the demand requires new strategies. Removing the prestige associated with buying ivory requires creative new uses of social media and other tools to change consumption behavior in China and elsewhere. Once the demand for ivory is curtailed there will be little financial incentive for criminal groups to continue elephant poaching and trafficking.
Yet because carved ivory is a centuries-old cultural tradition, this change will take time -- something the world's dwindling elephant populations don't have. That is why African nations with the greatest remaining elephant populations have begun to call for nations across the globe to stop selling and purchasing ivory until all African elephant populations have recovered to healthy levels.
The devastating poaching crisis that has gripped Africa over the past decade has left multiple tragedies in its wake: the loss of roughly three-quarters of all remaining African forest elephants; the murder of hundreds of courageous wildlife guards; regional government resources stretched to their limits as villagers across sub-Saharan Africa live in daily terror.
The initiative launched this week by representatives of elephant range states, ivory consumer nations, and our organizations has been endorsed by an unprecedented group of conservation partners that include the African Parks Network, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, the Freeland Foundation, the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, National Geographic, Save the Elephants, TRAFFIC, WildAid, and Wildlife Direct.

This effort is our best bet at saving these majestic, highly intelligent and socially complex creatures while bringing much-needed stability to governments whose hopes for a brighter future require that armed gangs no longer operate within their borders. Before it's too late, let's stop the killing, stop the trafficking and stop the demand.
~Cristian Samper, Patrick Bergin, Peter Seligmann, Azzedine Downes, and Carter Roberts
CNN
Friday, September 27, 2013


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Thursday, September 26, 2013

Spread the Word!

Hi, everyone!  I am excited to announce that my business cards for this blog came in!  If you would like a card to keep in your files, or to pass along, please email me at eis4elephants@gmail.com or comment on this post!







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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A Quick Reminder!

I would like to remind everybody to come join me to do the March for Elephants on Friday, October 4, 2013 in San Francisco! I am exited to report that I officially signed up today! Here is the link that leads you right to the registration page!





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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Judge Accouses Brothers Of Elephant Slaughter

It's amazing how much damage a single person can do.  Now multiply that by two.  Just think. 


DAKAR — A court in southeastern Cameroon is handing down verdicts against twin brothers accused of killing more than 100 elephants in Central Africa. Wildlife activists said the cases are part of a broader commitment to tackle poaching that has devastated the region’s elephant population.

On Monday, a court in the southeastern Cameroon town of Yokadouma found Symphorien Sangha guilty of killing elephants and wounding a forest ranger.

A verdict in a separate case against his brother, Rene Sangha, is expected to be handed down on Friday.

Together, the two men are believed to be responsible for killing more than 100 elephants in the region dating back to 2006. They face sentences of up to three years, and Symphorien Sangha faces 10 additional years for assaulting the forest ranger.

Both men have previously been arrested multiple times but this appears to be the first time they will be successfully prosecuted.

The World Wide Fund for Nature said the brothers - both originally from the Central African Republic - sometimes collaborated in their poaching activities.

Alain Ononino, head of WWF’s law enforcement program in Cameroon, said that while Rene Sangha worked as a forest ranger in the C.A.R., he is believed to have provided information that helped his brother evade the authorities.

Ononino said these types of prosecutions can help curtail poaching, which has killed many thousands of elephants in the region dating back to the 1970s and has continued even after the global ivory trade was banned in 1989.  “Poachers will be deterred, and this is going to reduce the threat and the pressure on wildlife species, especially elephants,” he said.

WWF said these cases are an example of how regional governments are increasingly working together to crack down on poaching. One of the key witnesses was an official from the Central African Republic who travelled to Cameroon multiple times to provide testimony.

The two brothers operated in the Sangha Trinational site in the Congo Basin, which includes land from Cameroon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo. UNESCO added Sangha Trinational to its list of World Heritage sites in July 2012.


~Voice Of America
September 24, 2013



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Monday, September 23, 2013

The Backstory- 81 Elephants Dead

Remember how 81 elephants were killed a few days ago?  Well the police discovered that the leader put deadly mixtures into the watering holes of elephants and other wildlife.  


HARARE, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's government said Monday that a "poaching syndicate" has killed at least 81 elephants, unknown numbers of buffalos and kudus by poisoning in the country's largest national park.
Six suspects were arrested two weeks ago but the scale of the cyanide-poisoning has only gradually unfolded as more elephant carcasses were discovered in the sprawling Hwange National Park. Authorities on Monday warned "huge spiral effects" as primary predators like lions, vultures, and others that feed on the contaminated elephants carcasses would be poisoned as well.
Police revealed that the syndicate, led by a South African businessman, mixed up a combination of cyanide, salt and water and poured the cocktail in about 35 salt licks at watering holes known to be frequented by elephants. At other watering holes the poachers would dig holes and place containers containing the deadly mixture into the holes.
Zimbabwe's newly appointed Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Savior Kasukuwere declared a "war" against poaching.
"We declare zero tolerance to poaching. We must put a stop to this. We cannot continue with this non-sense," state media quoted Kasukuwere as saying after he went to inspect the ecological impact of the poisoning -- his second trip in a week.
Tourism and Hospitality Minister Walter Mzembi, who accompanied Kasukuwere to Hwange, described the poisoning as case as "murder" of Zimbabwe's our wildlife and pledged to take the fight to those international source markets.
Hwange, spanning 14,651 square kilometers, is home to about 50, 000 African elephants. Over the years, elephant population in Africa has been rapidly declining due to rampant poaching. Zimbabwe is among a few countries, mostly in southern Africa, that still have a significant number of elephants.
The Zimbabwean government allows ivory trade in the domestic market, but puts strong restrictions on exporting the ivory products. The country's law provides maximum 11 years in prison for people convicted of poaching.

~Africa News
September 23, 2013



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Saturday, September 21, 2013

Part Two Of Shirley's Story


Here is Part Two of the remarkable story of Shirley!  Make sure you have tissues!



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Friday, September 20, 2013

Saving Shirley


Take the time to watch Part One of this story.  Shirley, a retired circus elephant can only use three of her legs, and hasn't seen another elephant in 20 years.  The little company she has loves her and has been with her the whole time, though.  




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Thursday, September 19, 2013

And now for something completely different 6.0



...And a round of applause for the star of the show, the amazing elephant! 




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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Saving Elephants On the Other Side Of The World

Dear E is for Elephant readers, this article proves that we can make a difference, even if we don't live where the elephants do. 

Encouraging words fromo my favorite song:

"Don't let nobody ever tell you that it couldn't be done,
Don't let nobody ever tell you that we couldn't be one,
Don't let nobody ever tell you that it shouldn't be sung,
Don't let nobody ever tell you you're the only one."

~Michael Franti
"Hey Hey Hey"





Endicott, NY (WBNG Binghamton) A local man brings a message from across the globe to Endicott, trying to save elephants struggling for survival in east Asia.
Don Glauber was Tuesday's guest at the Sierra Club.
He has been traveling to Thailand each year for the past five years, donating his time along with his wife Karen to help elephants at the Elephant Nature Park.
He has since become an elephant ambassador.
Glauber's presentation comes after a baby elephant in east Asia has gone viral on the internet, when a clip surfaced of it crying after being rejected by its mother in a zoo in China.
While Don Glauber hasn't seen the video, he has seen many others like it and says they can have a great impact.
"Sometimes YouTube does spread a video that pierces people in the heart and makes them realize these are beautiful, magnificent creatures," said Glauber.
Glauber said a majority of mistreatment of elephants is found in zoos and circuses, but can also be found with tourist attractions, such as elephant rides.
He says elephants have also been losing their jungle habitat, but he works year round to raise money to preserve these areas.

~WBNG News
Action News




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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A Short Wildlife Crime Video

To those of my readers who have been following my blog for a while  you may have seen a video similar to this one.  Click here to watch this AMAZING video about wildlife crime by EIA.





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Monday, September 16, 2013

Do The Math- How Much Longer Do We Have?

I think that the most important thing right now for the elephants is summed up in the second paragraph.  In three decades, 500,000 African elephants and 950,000 Asian elephants have been killed.  In the past 30 years, that's over 1,450,000 elephants.  If you calculate that, an average of 48,300 elephants have been killed per year.  At the rate we're going, elephants will be history by 2026.


An appalling reduction is under way in the world’s elephant population. The elephant — a usually gentle, long-lived animal — is considered by many experts to be nearly as intelligent as humans. It is still found in Africa and Asia, and in zoos, but it is in severe danger of extinction in the wild in the not-too-distant future.
Africa’s elephant population was estimated at 1.3 million in the 1970s; it now stands at fewer than 500,000. The Asian elephant population is below 50,000. Elephants will be extinct in Kenya by 2025 if the rate of killing prevails.
In zoos around the world, the elephant population is aging past breeding time. In the wild, greedy poachers are quite ready to kill elephants for their tusks. They are equipped with increasing arms supplies from Africa’s wars, and from dealers who traffic in the avid, largely Asian, market for trinkets, jewelry, and art made from ivory.
Elephants face other threats to their habitat. Farmers, especially in Africa, want the land that elephants require for grazing. Unregulated loggers are cutting down the trees that form a large part of elephants’ diet.
Who is responsible for the progressive elimination of elephants? The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has identified source, transit, and consumer countries involved in the bloody trade.
Countries on the list of poachers include Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and South Sudan. Transit countries named are Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Consumer countries include China, Thailand, and Japan.
The loss that the extinction of the elephant would represent, unless it is halted, will be nearly as grave for the human population that is unable to protect this global asset as it is for the animal itself. What is the matter with us?

~The Blade
September 15, 2013



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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Watch This Documentary Tonight!

I encourage everyone to watch this documentary on Prince William tonight!  It is on tonight, September 15, at 10 PM Eastern Time.  If you do watch it, please comment what you thought about it!

Prince William’s Passion:  New Father, New Hope will premiere on CNN Sunday, September 15 at 10 pm ET.  The documentary chronicles Prince William’s passion for conservation in Africa, and how as a new father, he find himself more committed than ever to saving Africa’s endangered species.
In the film, Prince William recalls how his love for Africa was born, remembering his late mother Princess Diana when she returned from her trips: “She would come back with all these stories and full of excitement and just passion for what she had been doing and I sort of used to sit there, quite a sort of surprised little boy at the time, taking it all in.”
In the hour long special, Prince William shares with CNN’s Max Foster the evolution of his passion for conservation.  From childhood tales told to him by his parents, to memories of visiting Africa for the first time, to his proposal to the Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William recounts the pivotal role the continent and its endangered species have played in his life.  As a new father, what he once “believed,” he says he now “feels” on a much deeper level, and hopes that Prince George can experience the same Africa that he and his brother did as boys.  
Prince William’s Passion:  New Father, New Hope will also feature exclusive footage of the Royal couple's first public appearance together since the birth of their son at the Tusk Conservation Awards.  The Duke of Cambridge, as the Royal Patron of Tusk Trust – a dynamic organization that funds development programs in Africa – will present the Prince William Award for Conservation in Africa. 
~CNN Pressroom
9-11-13


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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Baby Elephant Cries For Mother

Right after this baby was born, the mother started to attack her baby.  Thankfully, the he was removed from his mother.  However, he cried for his mother for five hours!  Read the full story below!


A baby elephant cried for five hours after his own mother attacked and abandoned him at a zoo in China.
Shortly after the mother elephant gave birth to the calf in August at the Shendiaoshan Wild Animal Nature Reserve in Rongcheng, China, she stepped on him, according to Metro U.K. Veterinarians hoped it was an accident and treated the baby before returning him to the mother, but he was attacked again. So they removed him from her.
"The calf was very upset and he was crying for five hours before he could be consoled," an employee said, per Metro. "He couldn’t bear to be parted from his mother and it was his mother who was trying to kill him."
Photos taken of the crying baby elephant, named Zhuang Zhuang, show tears streaming from his red eyes and down his face. In one shot, he is seen laying under a blanket while he appears to weep.
Zoo employees have been caring for the injured baby elephant, and he is said to be doing better, according to The Huffington Post's translation of a Shandong TV report. The mother has exhibited a loss of appetite and may be depressed.
The University of California, Santa Barbara has delved into the question of whether elephants really cry, stating that it depends on which definition of "crying" is being used.
If "crying" is defined as shedding tears, then it is a "yes" since nearly all land mammals produce tears for eye lubrication. If "crying" is defined as shedding tears in response to an emotion, then the answer is a little less clear. It all depends on whether or not elephants actually experience emotions.
And there is evidence they do. Elephants are known to be highly expressive creatures, according to PBS. They are known to show a wide array of emotions, from joy and rage to grief and compassion.
Elephants show joy when playing and greeting others by trumpeting and flapping their ears. When a baby is born, females can sometimes be heard bellowing and blaring, according to PBS. Elephants are widely known for expressing grief after the loss of a loved one, similar to humans. They mourn the dead by touching the bones or circling the body. Some researchers have suggested they may even relive memories and equate such an interest in the dead with evidence they have a concept of death itself.

~Cavan Sieczkowski
Huff Post Green
Friday, September 13, 2013



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Friday, September 13, 2013

How to Scare Elephants—For Their Own Good

It's amazing how elephants can sense these things: they know if a human is a friend or foe, they know if a lion will strike, and they even know to run away from African Honeybees.  Check out this new National Geographic article about these magnificent animals.


When an old African elephant matriarch hears a lion roar out on the savanna, she listens to discern whether it's a male or female. Why does she care? Because male lions are more likely to attack. (See: "Older Elephants Know the Best Anti-Lion Moves.")
Not many predators can take down an elephant, so it's useful for the massive mammals to know when it's worth their effort to run away. "We know that African elephants have very sophisticated discrimination abilities," says Lucy Bates, a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. They also respond to the buzz of disturbed African honeybees, and can smell the difference between human friends and foes.
Conservationists hope to use elephants' keen senses to reduce conflicts that arise when elephants munch on humans' crops. Until now, researchers have focused on African elephants, but the first study with Asian elephants shows them to be equally adept at sensing threats.
So, what's new? A study published in Biology Letters today suggests that wild Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can tell the growls of various big cats apart and know which pose more danger to them.
Co-author Vivek Thuppil, an animal behaviorist at the University of California, Davis, heard about a farmer in southern India who played a recording of a tiger growl to scare elephants off his property. Thuppil and his colleagues wanted to test the strategy. Using video cameras camouflaged with elephant dung, they documented Asian elephants' reactions to pre-recorded tiger and leopard growls along village farm roads in southern India at night—prime raiding time.
When the elephants heard the tiger growls, they crept silently away. Leopard growls elicited a very different reaction—stomping, circling, and trumpet calls—although the elephants did eventually retreat. "You don't want to get involved with anything that has claws and teeth," says Thuppil. "So, they eventually decided to choose the safe option, which was interesting."
What does this mean? A leopard probably couldn't do much damage to an elephant, while tigers sometimes eat elephant calves and could seriously injure adults. "It would pay for the elephants to recognize when a tiger is nearby so they can retreat, without wasting time by running away for every big-cat growl they hear," says Bates, who was not affiliated with the study.
Unique guttural pulse patterns in each animal's growl may help Asian elephants differentiate between the two feline species. Elephants growl too, and have evolved to recognize growls from different individuals in their herd based on small acoustic differences. That capacity might translate to helping them distinguish between tiger and leopard growls, says Thuppil.
Why is this important? In India, more than 200 people die in elephant attacksannually, while humans kill at least that many elephants each year. Since deaths on both sides are often related to crop raiding, new methods of keeping the peace between humans and elephants are in high demand.
"This study adds to our growing knowledge of how elephants perceive the world, and it is exciting because it could have implications for the struggle to reduce human-elephant conflict," says Bates.
What's next? Broadcasting tiger growls over speakers could be an easy way to trick elephants into steering clear of Indian villages. But that conservation strategy might stop working if elephants get used to hearing the sounds. "Something like this would need to be more fine-tuned," says Thuppil. One way to do that is to simulate a moving threat by playing a sound in different places; that's the UC Davis team's next research project.

~
Helen Thompson
National Geographic
September 12, 2013


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Thursday, September 12, 2013

Edinburgh, Bangalore, Boise!

Dear Readers:  In countries across the world, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is putting on a March For Elephants.  Find the nearest city where the march is taking place, and stand up to wildlife crime!





-Arusha, Tanzania
-Bangkok, Thailand
-Buenos Aires, Argentina
-Cape Town, South Africa
-Edinburgh, Scotland
-London, England
-Los Angeles, CA
-Melbourne, Australia
-Munich, Germany
-Nairobi, Kenya
-New York, NY
-Rome, Italy
-Toronto, Canada
-Washington D.C.
-Wellington, New Zealand
-Ann Arbor, MI
-Aberystwyth, Wales
-Adelaide, Australia
-Auckland, New Zealand
-Bangalore, India
-Boise, ID
-Boulder, CO
-Brussels, Belgium
-Columbus, OH
-Durban, South Africa
-Greensboro, NC
-Hong Kong, China
-Houston, TX
-Jacksonville, FL
-Las Vegas, NV
-Maputo, Mozambique
-Paris, France
-Philadelphia, PA
-Phoenix, AZ
-Princeton, NJ
-Robertsport, Liberia
-San Francisco, CA


See you in San Francisco on October 4th, Northern California Readers!



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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

U.S. Will Crush Ivory to Save Elephants

Here's another article talking about the government destroying 6 tons of ivory in the near future.  Time magazine reports that the government thinks that by destroying the ivory will (hopefully) crush and as a result, destroy the ivory market.

U.S. Will Crush Ivory to Save Elephants

U.S. officials in Denver plan to pulverize more than six tons of ivory in order to fight illegal wildlife trafficking and save elephants.
The New York Times reports that the Fish and Wildlife Service has seized the ivory in order to publicly crack down on the illegal $10 billion industry. The confiscated items include carved tusks and other art objects, which will be crushed by rock grinders in October.
The seizure is part of a major push to combat the killing of protected wildlife, announced by President Obama on July 1. Officials said they will give $10 million to fight poaching in Africa, work with Asian countries to outlaw ivory trinkets, and more carefully monitor elephant populations.
The decision to destroy the confiscated ivory is controversial, and some question whether it will do anything to limit demand for ivory or make a dent in the worldwide black market. Authorities plan to use some of the ivory to make a memorial to slaughtered elephants.
~ Charlotte Alter
Time
September 10, 2013



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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

"Zimbabwe Elephants a Jumbo Problem"

Here's an interesting article by eTN about elephant populations.  Suddenly, are there too many elephants?

The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority said in an article in the Zimbabwe Gazette last week that the country's elephant population was 100,000 strong and becoming too large to manage.

Zimparks spokesman Caroline Washaya-Moyo said the elephant population - the third-biggest in the world - was putting a strain on the resources in the country's parks and the animals were becoming easy targets for poachers.

"Law enforcement requires operational equipment such as patrol kits, uniforms, radio communication kits, vehicles, boats, tracking equipment [eg GPS]," said Washaya-Moyo.

"Currently, most of the existing field equipment is old and obsolete. Poachers are getting sophisticated. In some situations poachers are using hi-tech gear including night-vision equipment, veterinary tranquillisers, silencers and helicopters."
Washaya-Moyo said that, unlike in other countries, Zimparks was not funded by the government. The parks authority currently owned a stockpile of 62,374,33 tons of ivory worth $15.6-million (about R159.5-million), which it was not allowed to export as it is bound by regulations from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

"The authority is therefore saying elephant ivory in store represents animals that are already dead. Why should we not use the dead to look after living animals?" she asked.
Conservationists in Zimbabwe are, however, sceptical about the numbers of elephants quoted.
The last comprehensive elephant census in the country was done in 2001, when their largest population, in Hwange National Park, was counted. Elephant estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature's elephant database from last year indicates an estimated 76,930 animals in the country with only 47,366 being "definite".

"Any figure of elephant numbers is a spurious guess," said Sally Wynn, spokesman for the Zambezi Society.

Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, said the parks authority was trying to spread "propaganda" to get Cites to allow an ivory sale.

"A couple of months back the numbers of elephant in the country were between 40,000 and 45,000 and that was sustainable. Now [the number of elephant] is 100,000. How do they come up with those figures?" he said.
Cites banned the commercial sale of ivory in 1989, but in 1997 allowed Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to sell their existing stock of ivory to Japan in 1999 and allowed a second sale that included South Africa in 2008.
Daphne Sheldrick, a conservationist based in Nairobi, last week said about 36000 elephants were killed in Africa last year, and elephants could be extinct in 12 years.
~Gill Staden
eTN
September 10, 2013


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