Day 383- Part Two of Female Leadership

A survival advantage

As the Amboseli population has thrived, matriarchs have become older and families larger under their leadership. A family’s propensity to spend time with other families within the network has declined. Analyses of elephant networks by Vicki Fishlock, a resident scientist with the AERP, suggests matriarchs become less gregarious and more conservative in their old age.

When it comes to survival, however, having a wise old matriarch to lead you is just as important as having other elephants to learn from in a wide social network. And the two influences are intertwined, because that matriarch determines who is in your network. “Good matriarch decisions balance the needs of the group, avoiding unnecessary travel while remembering when and where good resources are available,” Fishlock says. Studies in Amboseli have revealed that families with older, larger matriarchs range over larger areas during droughts, apparently because these females better remember the location of food and water resources. “The matriarch has a very strong influence on what everybody does,” she says, though exactly how they communicate their will to the group remains a mystery.

The idea that groups led by older matriarchs might have a survival advantage is supported by a study of elephants in Tangarire National Park in Tanzania. In 1993, infant elephant death rates rose from an annual average of just 2 percent to around 20 percent during a nine-month period of drought. With their dry-season refuge parched, some family groups stayed in the park while others made off for places unknown. Young mothers were far more likely than older ones to stay put and to lose calves, and families that migrated out of the park had lower mortality than those that remained. Since matriarchs lead long-distance group movements, this suggests that older females provide a survival advantage for their extended family.

More recent and direct evidence of the benefits of wise old matriarchs has come from Karen McComb at Britain’s University of Sussex. Using recordings of lions roaring, she tested the responses of Amboseli matriarchs of different ages in the social context of their family group. Elephants encounter lions infrequently, but they are one of the few predators that pose a real threat, especially for young calves. That threat is enhanced if the lion is male, because males, unlike females, are capable of overpowering a young elephant even when hunting alone. McComb found that older elephants — age 60 and older — seemed to listen longer to male than female roars, and their groups huddled together more frequently and closely than did those of younger matriarchs. This suggests that elephants defer to the knowledge of their elders and that matriarchs call the shots in deciding which anti-predator strategy to adopt, she says.

Older matriarchs also seem to be better at judging “stranger danger” from other elephants. At Amboseli, each family group encounters about 25 other families in the course of the year, representing about 175 other adult females. Encounters with less-familiar groups can be antagonistic, and if a family anticipates possible harassment it assumes a defensive formation called bunching. In one experiment, her team found that families led by older matriarchs were less reactive overall but bunched more in response to the sound of less-familiar individuals than did families led by younger females. They suspect this is because older matriarchs have a larger memory catalogue for elephant voices, allowing them to more precisely distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar ones, and respond appropriately.

Built to lead

There may be more to good leadership than just the wisdom that comes with age, though. Elephants appear to have personalities; Moss and Phyllis Lee from Scotland’s University of Stirling wonder whether certain character traits might be associated with effective leadership. They have identified 26 traits possessed by elephants — such things as confidence, fearfulness, opportunism and aggression — that group into four main personality dimensions: playfulness, gentleness, constancy and leadership. So far, they have analyzed just 11 adult females from one Amboseli family, and the matriarch does score highly in the leadership dimension. By assessing more elephant families, the researchers hope to identify the traits shared by the most and least successful matriarchs.

If effective leadership is important in Amboseli, it is even more crucial in parts of Africa where threats are greater. During the 1980s, poaching halved Africa’s elephant population. Things improved after activists and researchers alerted the world and helped bring about an international trade ban on ivory in 1989. However, in recent years poaching has been on the increase again. The oldest animals with the largest tusks are prime targets.

An inkling of the potentially dire consequences of killing matriarchs for ivory comes from Mikumi National Park in Tanzania, where elephants were heavily poached before 1989. In 2008, a team of researchers reported that elephant groups hardest hit by poaching had younger matriarchs, weaker social bonds and lower relatedness. Analysis of their feces revealed high levels of glucocorticoids, indicating chronic stress. And compared with groups with intact social structures, only half as many females had infants younger than 2. The stress of family disruption had clearly reduced their reproductive success.

Losing a leader

We do not yet know the full extent of the damage caused by the killing of wise old matriarchs. Given that they are instrumental in keeping their groups fed, watered, safe and reproducing, their entire social network will feel the loss. But studies suggest that despite disruptions to social structure, the elephants and their networks are resilient over the long term. They can and will recover if poaching pressure can be lifted, but that is a big “if.” Matriarchs may be adept at solving the problems faced by the elephants that look to them for leadership, but at the moment humans are their greatest problem.

This is an edited version of a story that appeared in New Scientist.

~Lesley Evans Ogden and The Scientist

January 27, 2014

The Washington Post

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Day 382- Part One of Female Leadership

Due to their beautiful, long tusks, male elephants are targets for the poachers.  However, once the bulls are all gone, the next victims are going to be the matriarchs.  The matriarch- an old, wise, female elephant- is what one would consider the leader.  She is extremely important to all of the elephants- you can read more below! 

What Elephants Can Teach Us About The Importance of Female Leadership

It has long been clear that elephant groups rely on their elder stateswomen, but just how important these females are is only gradually becoming apparent. Matriarchs are at the hub of a complex social network, and we are now getting insights into the nature of the ties that bind these close-knit groups and the key role that wise old leaders play in enhancing the survival of their members.

Matriarchs carry with them a trove of crucial information. They have a unique influence over group decision-making. And, like human leaders, the most successful may even possess certain personality traits. Much of what we know about elephant social life comes from research done at Amboseli National Park in Kenya, where the population lives in conditions close to a natural, undisturbed state. But this is unusual. Across Africa, elephant numbers are dwindling as demand for ivory has surged in recent years. Once poachers have killed the biggest males, mature matriarchs are their next targets. What happens to a group that loses its matriarch is not clear.

Elephant family unit

Amboseli’s elephants number around 1,400. They roam over approximately 3,000 square miles, inside and outside the park, and across international boundaries. These are the world’s longest-studied elephants. Nobody knows them better than Cynthia Moss, who has led the Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP) since she founded it in 1972. In particular, Moss and her colleagues have discovered much about elephant families and their social interactions. “Our studies show how absolutely crucial matriarchs are to the well-being and success of the family,” she says.

At Amboseli, the elephant family unit, consisting of a mother and her immature young, sometimes along with sisters, aunts and grandmothers, is the core of elephant society. Within family groups, which range in size from two to more than 20, the oldest, most experienced female takes the lead. But group size is constantly changing, responding to the seasons, the availability of food and water, and the threat from predators. An adult female elephant might start the day feeding with 12 to 15 individuals, be part of a group of 25 by mid-morning, and 100 at midday, then go back to a family of 12 in the afternoon, and finally settle for the night with just her dependent offspring. Known as a fission-fusion society, it is a complex social dynamic relatively rare in the animal kingdom but not uncommon in primates, including humans.

It has long been assumed that the structure of the wider social network grows out of natural patterns of mother-offspring associations, where daughters remain within their group for life while sons strike out on their own as teenagers. A team led by Beth Archie from Duke University decided to test this idea. By genetically analyzing fecal and tissue samples from 236 elephants at Amboseli, they determined how closely related they were to each other and then superimposed the familial ties onto observed patterns of association. They found a remarkable fit, indicating that the more closely related individuals are, the more time they tend to spend with one another. So, at Amboseli at least, a matriarch heads a group of her immediate relatives, and the social network extends beyond this core family unit.

~Lesley Evans Ogden and The Scientist

January 27, 2014

The Washington Post

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Day 381- The Ivory Coast

DAKAR, Senegal — After being tranquilized and loaded onto trucks with cranes, elephants that have been squeezed out of their traditional habitat in Ivory Coast are being relocated by conservationists in what is reportedly the first such operation attempted in Africa’s forests.

Ivory Coast is so enamored of elephants that its national soccer team is nicknamed after them. A tusker is prominently displayed on the national coat of arms. The country is even named after the ivory trade, underscoring how the giant mammals once proliferated in the West African nation.

Ivory Coast has not conducted a recent census to determine how many forest elephants are left in the country, but conservationists estimate there only are a few hundred. In Central Africa, their populations have been devastated by poaching in recent years.

The elephants being relocated were forced out of the Marahoue National Park by human migration possibly related to the West African country’s 2010-11 postelection violence, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. This week, the group began tranquilizing elephants outside the western town of Daloa, then locking them in a crate for the 10-hour drive to Assagny National Park on the country’s southern coast.

The dozen or so elephants targeted for relocation moved near Daloa two years ago and began wreaking havoc, destroying crops and killing two people including a small boy who accidentally stumbled upon elephant calves, prompting their mother to attack, IFAW said.

One calf is among those to be tranquilized and moved, the organization said. People gathered around in the red-dirt village of Daloa on Monday to watch the spectacle of an elephant being loaded onto the back of a large red truck.

Forest elephants are smaller than the savannah elephants found in Africa’s eastern and southern regions. They have more oval-shaped ears and straighter tusks, and occupy dense forests stretching from Central African Republic to Liberia.

Elephants are widely cherished as Ivory Coast’s national animal, and the government contacted the animal welfare organization for help to solve the problem without hunting the elephants down and contributing to the ongoing decline of forest elephant populations throughout the region, said Celine Sissler-Bienvenu, IFAW’s director for Francophone Africa.

“This relocation solves a major conservation problem by contributing to the safety and well-being of both the animals and humans,” Sissler-Bienvenu said.

Similar projects have been undertaken for savannah elephants in southern Africa, but until this week relocation had not been attempted for the forest elephants of West and Central Africa, the Washington D.C.-based organization said.

~The Washington Post

January 24, 2014

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Day 380- The Loss

This is a map of wars or insurrections in Africa since 1994 from The Economist.  

The guns are funded by illegal poaching.  We all suffer from the loss of these animals.  

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Day 379- A Used Up World

"What good is a used up world,

And how could it be worth having?"

~Sting, "All This Time"

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Day 378- Stand Up For What You Believe In

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.  Intelligence plus character- that is the goal of true education."

~Martin Luther King, Jr. 

You and I - we are here to share our knowledge to others.  It is our responsibility to teach the world about the poaching of elephants, rhinos, bears, large cats, and all other animals.  

Spread the word about poaching, and stand up for what you believe in, just like the great Martin Luther King Jr. 

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Day 377- The Study of Elephants

Andrea Turkalo is a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is based in the Central African Republic but recently had to flee to the United States. She says violence is the latest blow to efforts to save the region's forest elephants. The society's online campaign to conserve elephants is called 96 Elephants.

Richard Schiffman: How did you come to study elephants in the Central African Republic?
Andrea Turkalo: It was an accident. I never thought I would study elephants, but I happened to be in the right place about 30 years ago—the Dzanga Bai forest clearing. It is the most phenomenal location to see forest elephants in the world. So I stayed.

RS: You work on the Elephant Listening Project. What does it do?
AT: Elephants are very vocal. We use acoustical monitoring to track them in the forest where we cannot see them.

RS: What do we know about elephant chitchat?
AT: The females do most of the talking, so to speak. There's no syntax in their language, and we don't think they form sentences, but they can recognize one another's voices. Elephants sometimes use frequencies that humans can't hear—these are the sounds that travel the farthest in the forest.

RS: You recently had to flee violence in the area. How has it affected the elephants?
AT: Former members of Séléka, a disbanded coalition of rebel groups, are terrorizing local villagers. They are also involved in poaching to help finance military operations. In May they came into Dzanga clearing and gunned down 26 elephants.

RS: Was poaching a problem before that?
AT: Yes. We have lost 60 percent of forest elephants in the Congo Basin to poaching during the first decade of this century. At that rate, they could go extinct within 10 years.

RS: Who's to blame for poaching?
AT: Nowadays, poaching is often run by international syndicates or by outsiders—refugees who have emigrated into our area from the savannah to the north. It appears to be very well-organized. We need a lot more intelligence on who these groups are and where the ivory is going.

RS: Are other countries involved?
AT: We think so. The Chinese have come into Central Africa in a big way for mineral extraction and logging. Wherever they go, we see elephant numbers decline. Nowadays, traffickers around the globe can go online and find out where these elephants live. Our research group recently put up a photo of a beautiful old male with huge tusks on its website. Immediately, we saw an extraordinarily high number of page hits from China and the Far East.

RS: How do local people view poaching?
AT: Poaching isn't always perceived as a real crime. When poachers are caught, a lot of the time they get their wrists slapped, spend a couple of weeks in jail, and are then released to continue the killing. Attitudes need to change.

RS: What can be done to halt the decline?
AT: We need a return to political stability coupled with the political will to support the wildlife rangers on the ground, and to get serious about punishing the poachers and the people they sell to. It's also vital to put a lot more pressure on China and other ivory consumers to eliminate demand.

~Richard Schiffman

New Scientist

January 19, 2014

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Day 376- The Facts 3.0

Here are some facts about our favorite species! 

African Elephant:

-Gestation Period- about 670 days

-Weight- about 12,000 pounds

-Height- about 3 feet (newborn)

               -about 9 feet (adult female)

               -about 11 feet (adult male)

-Lifespan- about 60-70 years

Asian Elephant:

-Gestation Period- about 550 days

-Weight- about 6,000 pounds

-Height- 6.5– 11.5 feet

-Lifespan- about 60 years

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Day 375- The Unlucky Tale of Lucky

SAN ANTONIO — Lucky, the San Antonio Zoo's lone elephant, may be less fortunate than her name suggests, according to an international animal rights organization that Wednesday dubbed the local park the “worst zoo for elephants” in North America.

Lucky, 53, has been at the local zoo since the age of 2, according to San Antonio Express-News archives. She's been kept alone since her penmate Boo, a 59-year-old Asian elephant, died last March.

The group, In Defense of Animals, calls the zoo's decision to keep Lucky “in solitary confinement” since Boo's death “stubborn and selfish” because elephants are “profoundly social animals.”

An online petition on thepetitionsite.com website had gained 11,250 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.

San Antonio Zoo officials say that, despite being named the worst on the group's “Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants” for 2013, they believe the zoo's experienced veterinary staff is in a better position to determine conditions of its animals.

“We are firm believers that we know what's best for Lucky (rather) than whoever is putting the list together,” said spokeswoman Debbie Rios-Vanskike, adding that the zoo's focus isn't on a list but on what's best for all the animals in their care.

This is the sixth time in 10 years that the San Antonio Zoo makes the IDA's list of worst zoos for elephants.

In Defense of Animals, an international animal protection organization, also took issue with the size of Lucky's enclosure.

“The zoo is dumping $8 million into a centennial plaza aimed at making the place more fun for visitors, not more bearable for the animals,” the group wrote on its website.

The “Zootenial Plaza” will open to the public in March and commemorates the park's 100th year. The $8 million plaza will include a restaurant and custom-made carousel, according to its website.

There are a total of 27 elephants in zoos in Texas, according to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits 223 zoos in the world. San Antonio's AZA accreditation is current, through March 2018.

~Kolten Parker
mySA
January 16, 2014

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Day 374- The Facts 2.0 According to The NYT

On a winter day in 2012, a man named John C. Fitzpatrick made his way to the fourth floor of 7 West 45th Street, to the offices of Raja’s Jewels, where he expected that he would find a cache of ivory.

Shopping in the diamond district over the previous two weeks, Mr. Fitzpatrick had learned that Raja’s, operating from a suite of offices, supplied a few retail stores. This was valuable information: Mr. Fitzpatrick was actually a lieutenant for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, its chief investigator in New York City. So he arrived at Raja’s with a search warrant, accompanied by investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.

Before the day was out, they had to send for a pickup truck. One of the investigators ran out to Staples to buy boxes. There was ivory in filing cabinets, piled on a floor in a back room. Close to a ton.

So much ivory, it filled 72 banker boxes.

That is: The contents of 72 boxes were essentially all that remained of more than 100 elephants that had been poached for their tusks — their incisor teeth, now transformed into beads and chess sets, bone-white animal figures, bangles and toys, charms and earrings, pendants and bracelets.

And that is: The largest land creatures on earth, slaughtered for trinkets, to the point where the African forest elephant could be extinct within a decade, according to Elizabeth Bennett, a species conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

This dire situation exists even though international commercial trade in ivory has been outlawed by treaty since 1989, according to Dr. Bennett and other witnesses who testified on Thursday at a hearing held by the State Assembly.

“New York City has, by far, the largest market for ivory of any major U.S. city,” Dr. Bennett said. “In a 2008 study of the U.S. ivory trade, researchers found 124 outlets that sold more than 11,300 ivory products. This was in Manhattan alone.”

The city is a hub of trade for international poachers, who sell to both American and foreign markets. A man who lived as a hoarder in a tiny apartment in Flushing, Queens, bought $1 million in rhinoceros horn from an auction house in just one day. The rhino horn is prized in Asia as an aphrodisiac. The man was used as a straw purchaser for foreign buyers. Bear gall bladders are also heavily traded.

The hearing was called by Assemblyman Robert K. Sweeney, chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation, to ask experts how to improve the state’s law on the ivory trade.

It turns out that despite the 1989 ban, ivory can be legally sold if it was “harvested” before then. (While many animals can grow new horns, an elephant is killed in the removal of its tusks.) In theory, the state regulations require proof that the person selling ivory can show that he or she owned it before the ban. In practice, a permit can be obtained in perfunctory fashion, with a statement by an appraiser that the ivory is of the proper age.

There is no easy, inexpensive way to determine the age of a piece of ivory, according to Maj. Scott Florence, director of law enforcement for the Department of Environmental Conservation.

“I’ve seen pieces of ivory that have been stained to make them look as dark as this table,” Lieutenant Fitzpatrick testified, tapping on a table top that seemed to have a maple color.

One scientist testified that it might be practical to gauge the age of the animal that was the source of the ivory by testing for the presence of radioactive ions that were fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the late 1950s. That might provide an enforceable boundary line for sales, he suggested.

The illegal sale of ivory worth more than $1,500 is a Class E felony, the lowest felony there is, and is almost never accompanied by prison time. During the 2012 investigation in the diamond district, caches were found at three businesses: one worth $30,000; another worth $120,000; and the largest, at Raja’s, worth more than $2 million.

“You had three orders of magnitude, but all were charged with the same E felony,” Lieutenant Fitzpatrick testified. “It’s often the case that their lawyers tell them that they don’t have to talk to us because they are not going to jail anyway if they are tried and convicted.”

The owner of Raja’s, Mukesh Gupta, pleaded guilty. He was fined $45,000 for his ton of ivory.

He also forfeited the ivory, which is now being used for law enforcement training. New York City — the largest illegal-ivory market in the country — has a grand total of three state investigators.

~Jim Dwyer

The New York Times

January 16, 2014

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Day 373- Cuddling With Elephants

Sweet baby elephant Tara reminds us that love is universal! 

If you have trouble viewing this adorable video, you can here.

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Day 372- Extinction Affects Us All

This article made me think- not only about the devistation of possibly losing elephants- but how the loss of this amazing species. 

~~~~~~~~

Elephant massacres have a devastating ripple effect on local communities. Poaching is often commissioned through an elaborate criminal network, with little accountability at the very top.  Money from ivory sales trickles into the hands of terrorist militias such as the Lord's Resistance Army who use it to enforce mayhem in various parts of Africa.

You'll  see how quickly elephants have disappeared in the last 15 years. Judging by the increasing number of ivory seizures in the last year, these numbers are underestimates. At this rate, elephants could vanish in just 10 years. Without elephants, entire ecosystems dependant on elephants will also be lost.

Time is running out to save the world’s giants. Our next steps will be to lobby governments and reach an international agreement to cease all future stockpile sales. Thank you for your continued support.

~The Independent

January 14,2014

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Day 371- Killing is NOT Conservation

Over the weekend, the Dallas Safari Club auctioned off the rights to kill one of the few remaining black rhinos for $350,000.  It has been said that this old male rhino is aggressive, and it will be better for the species if he was eliminated, however there is a lot of controversy over this topic.  The $350,000 is going to protecting the other (almost extinct) black rhinos.  But is it really okay to encourage the public to kill one of the few remaining rhinos? 

Killing is not conservation. 

Windsor Genova – Fourth Estate Cooperative Contributor

Dallas, TX, United States (4E) – Namibia’s first international permit to hunt one endangered rhinoceros in the country was sold for $350,000 at an auction in Dallas, Texas on Saturday evening.

The Dallas Safari Club (DSC), which conducted the closed-door bidding of the permit at the Dallas Convention Center during its annual convention, did not name the winning bidder for security reason.

The club’s officials apparently received death threats as the auction drew protesters. Before the convention, animal rights activists, former “The Price is Right” TV show host Bob Barker and Jeffrey Flocken of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) criticized the auction. Online, more than 80,000 people signed a petition opposing the auction.

The ministry of environment and tourism of Namibia, where about a third of the world’s 5,000 endangered black rhinos live, issued the hunting permit for one old and aggressive rhino to raise funds for the conservation of the same animals.

The ministry, which issues only three such permits per year, only allows hunting of “old geriatric bulls” that do not contribute to the animal population or attack younger rhinos.

DSC executive director Ben Carter justified the auction and hunt saying it is the best way to increase the dwindling black rhinoceros population. Flocken disagrees and said it promotes hunting of the endangered animal.

The issue has put the Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, which helps the Namibian government fight poachers, in a dilemma. Marcia Fargnoli, chief executive officer of the organization, admitted she struggles to save rhinos and at the same time let one to be hunted because Namibia is a poor country that needs funds to run its conservation program.

~AHN

GantDaily

January 12, 2014

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Day 370- The Gift of A Day

 



As environmentalists, I think we all need to remember this: 

"This bright, new day... Complete with 24 hours of opportunities, choices, and attitudes. A perfectly matched set of 1440 minutes. This unique gift, this one day, cannot be exchanged, replaced, or refunded. Handle with care. Make the most of it. There is only 1 to a customer."


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Day 369- Tanzania's Tragic Loss

Elephant in Tanzania.  Photo by Amanda Schmidt, "Your Shot" National Geographic

"The Selous-Mikumi ecosystem {In Tanzania} had 109,419 elephants in 1976, but the number has gone to 13,084 now. This is very serious."

All over Africa we are seeing reports of huge decreases in elephant populations. We have lost so many innocent animals due to poaching in the last few decades, it's unbearable. 

To read more about the population drop in Tanzania, you can click here.

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Day 368- Eager Along With the Rest of Us!

"There were roughly 1.2 million elephants in Africa in 1980, compared to roughly 420,000 last year.... The fact that we’ve lost three quarters of the elephants, it’s alarming and clearly we have to do something about it..."  

 As some of my readers know, I received a letter from Hillary Clinton last year, explaining how she too, is eager to put an end to poaching in Africa.  I can't wait to see a stop in the illegal wildlife trade!

~~~~~~~~

Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to take up the public fight of saving African elephants, who are being slaughtered in large numbers to supply the growing demand for ivory in China and other Asian countries.

Clinton, who met privately with representatives from a dozen environmental groups and National Geographic at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo on Monday, pledged to use her political connections as America’s former secretary of state to enlist other world leaders in the effort to curtail the illegal ivory trade.

Cristian Samper, WCS president and CEO, said in an interview that elephant poaching has reached such a crisis point that the world’s leading conservation groups are launching a coordinated strategy to address the problem.

Clinton agreed to “take some very specific steps, including using her political contacts with heads of state in trying to raise awareness about this issue,” Samper said. “This is an issue that needs to be elevated, not just in terms of public awareness, but particularly with the political leaders in other countries.”

As the demand for ivory has grown in Asia — where the ivory from a tusk can sell for $1,000 a pound — the poaching of African elephants has exploded. Roughly 30,000 African elephants were killed illegally in 2012, according to the World Wildlife Fund, the largest number in 20 years.

There were roughly 1.2 million elephants in Africa in 1980, compared to roughly 420,000 last year. The African forest elephant, which resides in the Congo Basin and is smaller than the renowned savannah African elephant, has been hit particularly hard. This spring, WCS estimated that the population of African forest elephants plummeted 76 percent in the last decade.

“The fact that we’ve lost three quarters of the elephants, it’s alarming and clearly we have to do something about it,” Samper said.

As secretary of state, Clinton showed an interest in the plight of African elephants, hosting a conference on the issue in Washington last year. Clinton declined to comment Tuesday.

John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General.of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), welcomed Clinton's involvement in the issue.

“The magnitude of the threat requires a commensurate response from enforcement-related bodies and personnel at all levels - national, regional and global," Scanlon said in a statement. "In particular, we must use our collective efforts to help national enforcement officers deploy the same suite of tools used to combat other types of crime."

The groups at the meeting — including the African Wildlife Foundation, the American Association of Zoos and Aquaria, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, TRAFFIC and WWF — agreed to pursue a three-pronged strategy aimed at stopping the killing, trafficking and demand for elephants.

Two weeks ago, President Obama launched a major initiative aimed at curbing wildlife trafficking, creating a Cabinet-level presidential task force charged with devising a national strategy and pledging $10 million in technological and training assistance to African governments so they could better combat poaching.

~Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post

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Day 367- 90% Poached

While the picture below is from 2011, you can imagine how much these facts have been inflated.  In parts of Africa 90% of deceased elephants were slaughtered for their tusks.

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Day 366- The Facts

Photograph by Beverly Joubert

"Tanzania’s elephant population declined from an estimated 109,000 elephants in 2009 to around 70,000 in 2012, according to the Tanzania Elephant Protection Society. Around 30 elephants are killed for their ivory every day, almost 11,000 each year."

This is a portion of an article Sarah Morrison wrote for The Independent yesterday.  I found these facts absolutely horrifying!  I can't believe that so many elephants are killed per day in Tanzania alone!  

Photograph by Tim Laman

"More than 100,000 Asian elephants may have existed at the start of the 20th century. The population is estimated to have fallen by at least 50% over the last 60-75 years."

World Wildlife Fund has never let me down!  These facts trouble me too, however.  There is somewhere between 25,600 and 32,750 Asian elephants left, also according to WWF.  

"Only when the last of the animals horns', tusks, skins and bones are sold, will mankind realize that money can never buy back our wildlife."

The author of this quote is unknown, and this is a altered version of an old Native saying, but when I came across it, it immediately caught my eye.  As  Joni Mitchell and many others have said, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Not only is it unfair to our wildlife that animals are being killed for human greed, but it will also be unfair to our grandchildren, their grandchildren, and theirs.  At the rate we're going, elephants are going to be completely wiped out in 2025.  That's only TEN years away!  Poaching NEEDS to stop! 

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