tagged w/ African elephants
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Los Angeles Times...
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Tucson zoo fight involves elephants, Bob Barker
January 18, 2012 | 3:52 pm
PHOTO:
Elephant herd at San Diego Zoo's Safari Park
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Connie is an Asian elephant, Shaba an African one. Nonetheless, they formed a bond, paling around together for three decades at Tucson’s Reid Park Zoo.
So when zoo officials announced plans last year to move Connie to the San Diego Zoo –- without her buddy Shaba -– animal activists were enraged.
The Tucson zoo was planning to bring in a herd of African elephants from San Diego, the Arizona Daily Star reported. Because zoo accreditation standards demand that new herds not mix African and Asian elephants, "due to multiple species differences and possible disease transmission issues," Connie would join other Asian elephants in San Diego.
But local activists Tracy Toland and Jessica Shuman considered the separation cruel. It “defies everything we know about elephants: their intelligence, profoundly deep social bonds (females remain with their mothers for life) and the capacity for deep emotion,” they wrote in the Daily Star.
The women launched a campaign to keep Connie, 44, and Shaba, 31, together and added some celebrity sizzle to the debate. At their behest, former “Price Is Right” host and well-known animal advocate Bob Barker recently offered to contribute $500,000 to send the elephants to a California sanctuary if others could raise matching funds.
This week, Tucson zoo officials reversed course, announcing that Connie and Shaba could both move to San Diego, the Daily Star said. Turns out, San Diego’s Asian elephant herd already has an African member, so Connie and Shaba’s cross-species kinship will fit right in.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Tucson zoo fight involves elephants, Bob Barker
January... more
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Uneasy truce between Maasai and nature
From David McKenzie, CNN
June 15, 2011 12:57 p.m. EDT
Maasai learn to be wildlife guardians
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Around 80% of Africa's elephants live outside of protected parks in the wild
The Maasai people are a pastoral tribe living along the border of Kenya and Tanzania
Some Maasai have turned to farming, bringing them into conflict with local elephants
The Maasailand Preservation Trust is trying to teach locals to live peacefully with the wildlife
Maasailand, Kenya (CNN) -- For tourists visiting Kenya, elephants represent the majesty of nature -- but for those living on the land the animals are often seen as pests.
At the foot of Chyulu Hills in Kenya, an area famous for its wildlife and the Maasai people that call it home, getting the balance right between the two has always been a delicate task. As more people farm in the region the strain on wildlife increases.
Around 80% of Africa's elephants live outside of protected parks in the wild. One conservation group has turned to local communities in an attempt to find solutions to everyday problems so man and beast can live peacefully.
"You know, that elephant that we are seeing down there now, the chances are that last night he was out raiding a field -- or if you go out and see a lion I guarantee you within the last week he has probably killed something belonging to one of the landowners here," explained Richard Bonham, conservationist and founder of the Maasailand Preservation Trust.
The Maasai people are a pastoral tribe living along the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Their long-preserved culture and traditional way of life has made them one of the area's most famous tourist attractions.
But conflict between the Maasai tribe and the region's elephants is on the rise and can lead to tragedy.
If this elephant problem doesn't get any better then we should just kill all the elephants.
--Reuben Silati, Maasai elder
One of the locals, Ndiari Ole Lemungur, was walking in a group near his homestead at night when he heard something moving.
"We were really scared ... at first we didn't know what was happening. But when we realized that it was an elephant two of us ran away and two stayed behind," he said.
He explained that one boy hid and narrowly escaped but another member of the tribe, Onetu, couldn't get away and was trampled to death.
"My son was young," said Onetu's father, Maasai elder Reuben Silati. "He had a long future ahead of him and I was hoping that he would take care of my homestead when I was gone. I am getting older every day and my son should have been the one to help me."
Silati called the trust and rangers tracked down and killed the elephant within hours. But this was not an isolated incident. As domestic animal and human populations grow conflict between animals and humans is more likely.
"If this elephant problem doesn't get any better then we should just kill all the elephants, because there is no need to live with them," Silati continued.
The Maasai have also taken up farming, something that is completely unlike these semi-nomadic people. But frequent droughts, put down to climate change, have led them to start growing food.
Kipareu Olesayiore is a Maasai farmer. He's begun growing melons and peas using irrigation. The practice has helped him supplement his income and survive the droughts.
Yes, you can choose to kill all the wildlife, but then what happens 10 years down line?
--Antony Kasanga, Maasailand Preservation Trust
But farms eat into wild habitats and the melons are candy for the elephants.
"You chase them (elephants) out of the farms and if you follow them a little bit they will attack you," said Olesayiore. "They have been here for three years, but this year is by far the worst."
Olesayiore has started putting up flashlights and solar lamps to try to stop the elephant raids but the method isn't very effective. He says that from time to time foreigners come and tell him to protect the animals.
"I will work with foreigners coming in, I will listen to their ideas, but sometimes I wont listen because there isn't much wildlife left where they come from, is there?" he said.
But the Maasailand Preservation Trust has been working with the Maasai community to use arguments that make sense to the people that need to understand them.
"When I was a young boy I used to just think wildlife is a nuisance; there is no value," said Maasai Antony Kasanga, who now works for the trust.
"Yes, you can choose to kill all the wildlife, but then what happens 10 years down the line? You have a kid and in 20 years time he says 'Daddy, I want to go see a lion.' Where do you take him?" he continued.
Kasanga works with the farmers; he doesn't preach to them but instead gives out solutions.
He hands out thunder flashes to scare the elephants away and if their cattle are killed by lions the trust gives them compensation.
The organization has also started the only primary school in the area and gives out scholarships to help educate the next generation.
Its efforts to engage with the local communities and win their hearts and minds may be the best hope for securing free ranging wildlife in Africa.
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http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/06/15/t1larg.maasai.cnn.jpgUneasy truce between Maasai and nature
From David McKenzie, CNN
June 15, 2011 12:57... more
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TIME Magazine (Blog).......
Shooting an Elephant: Why GoDaddy's CEO Was Wrong
Posted by Bryan Walsh Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 6:36 pm
UPDATE, 3 p.m. Thursday:
We all shoot vacation videos, but most of us choose to keep them to ourselves — or, at worst, share them with our Facebook friends. Bob Parsons, CEO of the Internet-hosting firm GoDaddy.com, which you know from its lame Super Bowl ads and absolutely nothing else — likes bigger exposure. Parsons recently posted a video of his trip to Zimbabwe, where he shot an elephant. See below:
Now, there are so many things wrong with this video that it's hard to know where to start. First: Is it really appropriate to score a scene of hungry villagers tearing apart a dead elephant to the tune of AC/DC's "Hells Bells"? And I can't be the only one who found it creepy that Parsons outfitted nearly everyone in the area with bright orange GoDaddy baseball caps. Not to mention the fact that this all took place in Zimbabwe, a broken country oppressed by the tyrannical Robert Mugabe, where 64% of the population lives under the poverty line and nearly 100% live in fear. This is one step up from taking a spring break in North Korea.
But of course the biggest criticism comes from animal-rights advocates who view Parsons' video — which shows him shooting and killing an elephant, then standing proudly over its corpse — as, well, showing poor taste. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) singled out Parsons for particular abuse:
I am writing to present you with PETA's first-ever scummiest CEO of the year award (your certificate is on the way). You deserve the award for your egregious disregard for the life of the elephant you shot and killed for your personal enjoyment. Such behavior only shows a poverty of understanding and a deep insecurity, perhaps in your own masculinity. Nonlethal methods are available to protect crops from elephants left hungry because of their disappearing habitat.
Parsons defended himself on his blog, arguing that his target was a "problem elephant" that had been destroying the crops of a nearby village:
I stand by my decision to help African villagers. I believe elephant management is beneficial. I have the support of the people who really matter in this situation, the families of Zimbabwe — people who need help to survive. I have the support of tribal leaders and the government.
Parsons isn't totally wrong — there is such a thing as "problem elephants," and human-elephant conflict is a real issue that needs to be dealt with in parts of Africa. From the World Wildlife Fund (WWF):
Not only are elephants being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas, but farmers plant crops that elephants like to eat. As a result, elephants frequently raid and destroy crops. They can be very dangerous too.
While many people in the West regard elephants with affection and admiration, the animals often inspire fear and anger in those who share their land.
Elephants eat up to 450kg of food per day. They are messy eaters, uprooting and scattering as much as is eaten. A single elephant makes light work of a hectare of crops in a very short time.
But that doesn't mean the best way to deal with this conflict is for rich foreigners like Parsons to make like Hemingway. There are sensible, nonlethal solutions, including using chili- or tobacco-based deterrents to keep elephants out of farmers' fields, or the simple method of growing crops that elephants don't like. WWF has more in this issue brief.
It's worth remembering that people bear at least as much responsibility as elephants do for any conflict, as the continuing growth of the human population puts more and more pressure on elephants. The African elephant is hardly thriving — the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists it as vulnerable. It's been a long time since shooting an elephant could be considered fashionable.
Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/03/30/shooting-an-elephant%e2%80%94why-godaddys-ceo-was-wrong/#ixzz1ID1PrQXTTIME Magazine (Blog).......
Shooting an Elephant: Why GoDaddy's CEO Was... more
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Photo: For four decades Iain Douglas-Hamilton has been an advocate for elephants, the endangered giants of Africa. Save the Elephants cofounder Iain Douglas-Hamilton has been named the 2010 recipient of the Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading award for animal conservation. Four decades ago, he pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behavior, which revealed their matriarchal society.
The Indianapolis Prize
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The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Save the Elephants cofounder Iain Douglas-Hamilton has been named the 2010 recipient of the Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading award for animal conservation. Four decades ago, he pioneered the first in-depth scientific study of elephant social behavior, which revealed their matriarchal society.
(The Indianapolis Prize)
By Yvonne Zipp, / Correspondent
November 1, 2010 at 9:38 am EDT
When Iain Douglas-Hamilton first started studying elephants in Africa, he had to invent ways of tracking the giant mammals. Over the course of 40-some years in the field, the zoologist learned how to fly airplanes and use radio collars and other high-tech means to follow their movements.
He also learned how to get out of the way – fast. "I learned how to climb trees very quickly," says Dr. Douglas-Hamilton, winner of the 2010 Indianapolis Prize, the largest prize ($100,000) given for animal conservation in the world.
As cofounder of the nonprofit group Save the Elephants, he also has learned to be an activist, author, and politician.
When Douglas-Hamilton left Tanzania, in East Africa, in 1970 to study at Oxford University in Britain, he left behind "an elephants' paradise," he recalls.
But when he returned in 1972, the country's national parks looked more like a war zone. Douglas-Hamilton often found more dead elephants than live ones.
"Never in all our wildest dreams did the small group of scientists who worked in Tanzania's national parks [in the 1960s] imagine that men armed with automatic weapons would one day stride through the national parks. It was just not in our thinking," he says of the heavily armed poachers who had moved in.
The soft-spoken conservationist now lives in Kenya with his wife, Oria, who co-founded Save the Elephants. Together they have written two books, "Battle for the Elephants" and "Among the Elephants."
During the height of the ivory poaching, Douglas-Hamilton rode in small planes wearing one flak jacket and sitting on another as he helped park rangers in Uganda bring back elephants from the brink of extinction. He's been repeatedly shot at and has survived plane crashes, droughts, floods, malaria, and once, being squashed by a rhinoceros.
He campaigned for years for a worldwide ban on ivory sales, which finally took effect in 1989.
His long-term commitment to saving elephants across Africa impressed the prize jury, says Michael Crowther, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoo, which administers the prize. Douglas-Hamilton pioneered the first scientific study of elephant social behavior, Mr. Crowther says.
Among his discoveries: Elephants have a matriarchal society and travel in families.
"He has been creative, committed, and consistent," Crowther says. "And he's been courageous – politically courageous and physically courageous."
"He shows bravery ... [and his work is so important," says Laurie Marker, a finalist for the Indianapolis Prize who founded the Cheetah Conservation Fund, based in Namibia. When CCF expanded into Kenya, it began working with Save the Elephants in Samburu National Reserve, in Kenya's Great Rift Valley.
Douglas-Hamilton has given practical assistance to CCF, from making introductions to sharing researchers and resources, Dr. Marker says.
Despite the ivory poaching ban, the future of African elephants is far from secure. Douglas-Hamilton describes the conditions in the Congo, for example, as "catastrophic" – and not just for elephants.
In 2009, he worked to save a rare herd of desert elephants in Mali from the worst drought in more than a decade.
There have been other successes, particularly in East and Southern Africa, whose elephant populations have rebounded since the ivory ban. At this year's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting in Doha, Qatar, conservationists, including Douglas-Hamilton, defeated an effort by the governments of Tanzania and Zambia to downgrade the status of their elephants so that they could sell off their stockpiles of ivory.
"If there's to be a future for elephants, there has to be an accommodation about how they're going to live in juxtaposition with people," says Douglas-Hamilton, who considers the rapid expansion of human populations one of the largest challenges facing all wildlife. "This is where science and research comes in. It has to be linked to community development."
Elephants "need space," he says, including protected corridors so that they can travel from one protected area to another. (Such corridors would also benefit other large mammals, such as zebras, wild dogs, lions, and giraffes.)
Douglas-Hamilton has proposed the idea of a mobile national park, where the protected land would follow elephants as they travel. No country has yet adopted it.
"I know we're dealing with poor people who have immediate needs," he says. "But we have to escape from the tyranny of poverty in order to have the luxury of long-term planning. If we don't, the poverty is not going to get any better and the environment is going to deteriorate."
He's also thrilled that young African-born conservationists now are joining the effort to save the continent's elephants.
Even after decades of research, Douglas-Hamilton still enjoys the company of these gentle giants, the largest of land mammals.
"I love to sit with them and be with them," he says. "I have the greatest joy just to be with elephants at peace."Photo: For four decades Iain Douglas-Hamilton has been an advocate for elephants, the... more
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Zimbabwe’s government, which so far has made no effort to relieve the suffering of it’s starving people, has now resorted to slaughtering the country’s elephants to feed Robert Mugabe’s soldiers.
According to ZimOnline, the state Parks and Wildlife Management Authority has since last week supplied elephant meat to army barracks, which, like the rest of the country, have run out of food. The crippling food shortage has left up to half the nation already facing starvation and in the midst of the cholera crisis has left untold thousands of people dead.
The country’s elephants are now the latest victims in a crisis that the government has refused to accept responsibility for. The Mugabe administration reportedly views the supplying of elephant meat to soldiers as “killing two birds with one stone” as it enables it to cull allegedly excess animals while also ensuring its army has food.
The army is a critical part of Mugabe’s continued grip on power and the soldiers’ comfort has long since taken precedence over that of the people. With no food or goods to plunder in the ravaged country anymore, it is not surprising that hunger is rearing its head in the barracks. Analysts have ruled out the possibility of a military coup against Mugabe because all top commanders are still relatively comfortable. But some say that worsening hunger could at some point force ordinary soldiers to either openly revolt or to simply refuse to defend the government, should Zimbabweans rise up in a civil rebellion.
Meanwhile Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi has declined to comment on the matter or to discuss the availability of food at army barracks in general, while Parks director-general Morris Mutsambiwa reportedly would not take questions on the matter. It is as of yet unknown how many elephants have been turned into soldier fodder, but it does go without saying that the slaughter is not merely a method of feeding the troops. The ivory collected will undoubtedly be sold off to the country’s dubious Chinese business links, lining the pockets of government officials and further aggravating the illegal ivory trade.Zimbabwe’s government, which so far has made no effort to relieve the suffering... more
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Stop the Slaughter!
Taita Ranch, Southern Kenya
Close to Tsavo East & Tsavo West National Parks
The elephant was female, aged about 27. She was 20 months pregnant. On 14th June 2008 poachers shot her with poisoned metal arrows and followed her as she stumbled miles through the African bush. After two days of agony she dropped. She tried to give birth to her calf before she died.
Wildlife rangers from the neighbouring Rukinga Wildlife Sanctuary ambushed the poachers when they had just killed the female. They were in the process of butchering her and hacking off her face to remove her tusks. It is suspected these would have been smuggled to China. Two of the poachers were arrested and taken to Voi police station but two got away. Kenya Wildlife Service followed up the case and the two men were each sentenced to six years in prison.
“Just one dead elephant and her dead calf. Just one story. Sickening, grotesque, etched on your mind. The atrocious reality. Every day 55 elephants are killed and chopped apart by poachers. We can’t let this continue. Help us stop this. We want to help Rukinga Sanctuary’s brave rangers and support anti-poaching patrols across Africa.”
Will Travers,
Chief Executive, Born Free Foundation
Caution: Disturbing Images
http://www.bornfree.org.uk/give/autumn-appeal/ivory-report/caution/
Born Free Foundation Stop the Slaughter!
Taita Ranch, Southern Kenya
Close to Tsavo East & Tsavo... more
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In a report in Current Biology, the researchers describe their experiments in Amboseli National Park in Kenya.In a report in Current Biology, the researchers describe their experiments in Amboseli... more
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