Baraza

Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Jan 30 2009 | By: Maina

WildlifeDirect News
From the Conservation Front line

No. 7 | SPECIAL PROGRESS REPORT | February 2009

The year has just begun and despite the difficult economic times that ushered in 2009, we are optimistic that we shall be seeing positive changes. After all there is a new dynamic administration in Washington, DC that has a promise of hope and progress for the US and - possibly - influencing positive change throughout the world.

This month’s newsletter is a special report highlighting our work in 2008 and looking forward in 2009. Follow our journey as we bring you a compilation of our high times and low times. Then join hands with us as we march forth into 2009 with hope and the passion to make a change.

The Blogs, Traffic and Donations in 2008
2008 was a growth year for the blogs with their numbers increasing to more than 90 blogs in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and South America. This number is expected to increase as we go out to actively seek new blogs from the Albertine Rift of Africa in 2009. This blogger network expansion project - funded by the MacArthur Foundation will seek to reach out to new bloggers in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Donations also increased significantly in the year. In general, donations in 2008 were higher than in 2007. In 2008, we raised US$ 293,648.11.

Chart: Donations and traffic trends

Traffic has also been on an upward trend during the past year with the number of visitors to the blogs growing from 32,742 in the month of January and peaking at 72,524 visitors in the month of October. Overall, the total number of visitors to the blogs rose from 197,330 in 2007 to 658,067 in 2008 (representing 233% growth!). We hope that you continue to visit the bogs and interact with our bloggers.

Major Campaigns and Achievements
Looking for MizaThe past year witnessed some very successful campaigns and some major achievements in our work. Our most successful fund raising campaign during the year was for mountain gorilla conservation as we continued our support towards the Virunga National Park and rangers in the midst of the conflict in eastern Congo. We raised $102,289 through 2,283 donations which has gone towards the rangers to help them through the crisis.

To raise global awareness of the situation facing mountain gorillas, we launched the children’s book ‘Looking for Miza’ - together with Clinton Foundation, Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, Scholastic Publications and Turtle Pond Publications. The launch was the first children’s gorilla summit in New York.

Significant funds were also raised in response to the emergency in the Mara Triangle US$161,746 from 776 donations enabling the Mara conservancy to continue anti poaching efforts despite the collapse of tourism and funding in Kenya.

Last year we conducted our 3 year strategic plan with the support of the Arthur Blank Family Foundation. This plan is being implemented in part as we continue to fundraise for further budgetary support to help us implement it in full.

Other significant supporters who also came on board to help in the development of WildlifeDirect include the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation giving US$ 250,000 for the Albertine Rift project, Wallace Global Fund with a grant of US $ 55,000 towards funding the development of WildlifeDirect, and the Arthur Blank Family Foundation and friends with US$ 49,000.

We thank all the donors who have to contributed towards our core costs. This raises between US$ 1,000 and 7,000 per month.

All these funds have been used to further the cause of conserving wildlife. Our bloggers every now and then update you on what they are doing with these donations. Continue visiting their blogs to see the impact of your participation - how your giving is making a difference in conservation.

Hurdles That Required Jumping
Conservation in Africa continues to be severely underfunded and things will get much worse this year due to the global economic down turn, and escalating costs of commodities in developing countries. We have seen how the war in the DRC and the economic collapse of Zimbabwe’s have set conservation back decades.

Our role in keeping conservation organizations alive during this difficult time is more important now than ever before. We hope you will continue supporting us and our bloggers in these difficult times.

Looking Forward in 2009
Despite the economic down turn we will implement our strategic goals as planned. Three major areas of operations will thus be key in this period:

1. New blogs in the Albertine Rift. This is a major project involving recruiting and training new bloggers in 6 African countries.
2. Improve our website for all our bloggers and visitors
3. Raise funds to enable the core team to survive and continue supporting our network of bloggers

With 77 projects receiving funding this year we are convinced that we are helping projects but we still have a long way to go. We hope that you believe in us too and will continue to support us so that we can help save wildlife from extinction.

Sincerely,

WildlifeDirect Inc.

WildlifeDirect ensures that all of your financial support (net of bank transfer fees) reaches our partners doing real conservation work on the ground.

3 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 26 2009 | By: baraza

Elephants have had a love hate relationship with humans for centuries -Hannibal used them to cross the alps in 218 BC. It must have struck quite an image for Europeans. Well, here are some recent elephant stories that caught my attention and have left me wondering if humans and elephants can co-exist.

Hungry military consume 6 elephants in Zimbabwe

The state Parks and Wildlife Management Authority started supplying elephant meat to army barracks across the country last week a senior officer in the army has said.

It’s not surprising that people are starving in Zimbabwe due to bad policies, the government sees supplying elephant meat to soldiers as a two for one. It reduces excess animals while also feeding a starving army. Just last week six elephant carcasses were delivered to the army barracks where it was welcomed with relief by hungry soldiers.

Starving elephants demolish homes in Malawi

In Malawi it seems that it’s not only people who are going hungry, elephants in search of food are apparently moving out of the Phirilongwe Forest Reserve and raiding peoples homes – and destroying them in the process. Thousands of villagers in the area of Mponda in Mangochi district are living in absolute panic after elephants destroyed 4 homes and crops in search of food.   The elephants are desperate, they have nothing to eat in their territory.  Thankfully, nobody has been injured or killed. The local villagers want the elephants tarnslocated…you can read the full story here http://www.nyasatimes.com/national/2509.html

Labourer trampled by 4 elephants

In the second incident, a 55-year-old tea garden labourer, Haren Tanti, was trampled to death by four elephants. The elephants had strayed out of the national park but villagers later managed to scare away the wild animals. All of us at WildlifeDirect send our condolences to the family and friends of Sumitra and Haren.

Problem elephants are caught and then trained in India

In Africa, cases of human elephant conflict are often dealt with by destroying the elephants or translocation to another place. However in India where elephants are sacred they are ‘rescued’ and taken into captivity. A wild elephant that had recently killed in Avaregunda, has been caught in the Maldare forest range. Trained elephants named  Abimanyu, Arjuna, Harsha and Shri Rama of the forest department participated in the `operation capture’ in which the wild elephant attacked the trained ones.

We congratulate the brave elephant Abhimanyu and Ms Chinnappa and Dr Nagaraj who led the successful mission. You can read the full story here

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mysore/6th_elephant_captured_in_Maldare_forest_range/articleshow/4030754.cms

Elephants in Russia may go on sale on the internet

Yury Durov, a renowned Russian circus trainer is desperately trying to keep two Indian elephants, Remi and Suzie, to whom he has devoted 30 years of his life in training and performing with at the Russian circus. If fails to come up with the asking price 100,000, Remi and Suzie will be auctioned off on the internet. You can read the story here

Russians celebrate Elephant heritage

Ironically, Russia claims a long history and culture of elephants and an exhibition of paintings, all featuring elephants, has just opened in Moscow. The title of the exhibition is ‘Russia is the Homeland of Elephants’

Tags: African elephants, circus elephants, elephants, human elephant conflict, Kaziranga

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 24 2009 | By: baraza

This post is in honor of Sheryl who has just reached her 50th. As you  all may have noticed Sheryl is not only reaching that grand age of 50, but she is also generously encouraging friends to donate to WildlifeDirect.

Please join us in congratulating Sheryl and wishing her another 50 exciting years.

11 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 22 2009 | By: baraza

 Dear all,

First, don’t forget it’s Sheryls birthday tomorrow. Now is a great opportunity to make her happy with a gift towards WildlifeDirect. Check out the donations widget on the right. Thanks Sheryl for being so generous.

I am re-posting the Garamba story because we now have photos.

We have just been informed that the fall out of LRA attacks in Garamba National Park in DR Congo are worse than we reported on earlier with photos here, in total ten people including 6 Garamba Park staff were killed.   Six people are still missing. This is from their official website posted on 20th January.

“Below is the list of the courageous rangers and the innocent civilians who lost their lives, were injured or were abducted during the sad events of 2 January. The toll is high, but could have been much higer without the strong resistance showed by the rangers and their wardens. African Parks express its deepest condolences and sympathy to the families that lost their loved ones.

Names of casualties:

People killed:
1.   Takipi Mawotama (Ranger)
2.   Bakpe Miso (Ranger)
3.   Atandroa Mokobe (Ranger)
4.   Makili nZambia (General Worker)
5.   Mbili Moke (General worker, electrician)
6.   Wife of Principal Warden Ligilima
7.   Wife of Warden Shematsi
8.   Silu (daughter of ranger officer Tamwasi)
9.   Guapa: Nagero villager
10. Ranger Officer Atolobako Vukoyo, abducted by the LRA and found dead on 19 January

People wounded:
1.  Chief Ranger Officer Atakuru Surandi
2.  Aguma (Nagero villager)
3.  Ayezema Madrandele (worker)
4.  Ngbapay (Nagero villager)
5.  Vene (Ranger’s wife)
6.  Chief Warden Bernard lyomi

People missing, probably abducted
1.  Ranger Azangia Nakengia
2.  Atakuru Manyanga, son of a ranger
3.  Aumbo Mandima, son of a ranger”

Please join us in sending our sympathies and condolences to the families and friends of all the slain rangers and their wives. We will also pray for the safe return of those missing.

Since the attack security at Nagero station in Garamba has been  stepped up and a cleanup operation is ongoing

If you would like to send a letter to the Garamba Park expressing your sympathies write to

African Parks Foundation
Adminstration Centrale Station de Nagero
Territoire de Dungu
District du Haut-Uélé
Democratic Republic of Congo

contact by e-mail -garamba@gmail.com

For more photos from Nagero

http://picasaweb.google.cz/Marakeita/GarambaNPMarkTaAntonNov?authkey=mkXmkmqwwE8#

http://picasaweb.google.cz/Marakeita/GarambaNPStPhaneCarr?authkey=AVFcfYoXWqQ#

http://picasaweb.google.cz/Marakeita/GarambaNPNageroLuizArranz#

http://picasaweb.google.cz/Marakeita/GarambaNPNageroMarketaAntoninova#

The two first links show the aftermath of the attack.

The two last ones show all the reconstruction and cleaning up activities since the attack.

Thank you

Paula Kahumbu

Tags: Attacks, conflict, DR Congo, Garamba, LRA, wildlife, wildlifedirect

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 22 2009 | By: baraza

Africo Resources, Ltd., is a company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, and development of precious metal and base metal properties principally in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It primarily explores for copper and cobalt in the Kolwezi District of Katanga Province in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Africo Resources, Ltd. is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

Here is one image of what’s happening to copper prices at Africo,

The Congo government put mining contracts on hold to undertake a review of all mining contracts - many companies abandoned their commitments when global commodity prices fell.  While many thought that Africa was somehow insulated from the global economic crisis, this is not true for DR Congo and other countries that depends largely on international mineral trade. The latest analysis predicts a gloomy time.

“The five year across-the-board rally in commodities, which drove up prices to historic peaks in mid-2008, collapsed in the space of three months between August and October as the secondary effects of the international credit crisis rippled through the world economy. This slump caught mining houses and host governments completely off guard, and created an arc of contraction across the mining sector in the Central and Southern African region:

The price of copper fell from its peak of about $4.10 (U.S.) per pound to under $1.40 per pound, and cobalt fell from $53 per pound to about $13 – with all other base metals registering similar quantitative declines.” Oxford Analytica

DR Congo is particularly hard hit and most of the 61 foreign mining companies which returned to the country after the 1998-2003 conflict have suspended, scaled back or withdrawn.

Oxford Analytica goes on to conclude about DRC

“By December, the Ministry of Mines had reported that more than 200,000 jobs had been lost in the mining sector, both formal informal, with a further 200,000 expected in the coming months as the industry in effect goes into hibernation. State revenues from mining are collapsing, companies are complaining of fiscal harassment by government, and the prospect of new revenue streams needed to finance the DRC’s post-conflict reconstruction will not now materialize – perhaps for some years.”

It’s anyone’s guess what will happen in terms of the conflict which many believe has been largely been financed by conflict minerals. At least one NGO, Pact Congo is trying to reduce conflicts in artisanal mines

What do you think will be the outcome of the global recession in the DR Congo…here are my predictions

1. Reduced mining - and less conflict - greater incentive for Congo and Rwanda to be friendly towards each other.

2. Greater poverty - more poaching and logging

Do you have any predictions?

- Paula

Tags: conservation, Copper, DR Congo, Katanga, mining

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 18 2009 | By: baraza

Another shocking story from Melissa Groo at Save the Elephants deserves some discussion about the justification of this action. Please feel free to leave a comment, opinion or insult for the British Killers.

British kill entire elephant herd (Zimbabwe) 

Hunting parties are paying out thousands to kill elephants, including calves, in Zimbabwe

Daniel Foggo, The Sunday Times

January 18, 2009

BRITISH hunters, including a prominent Harley Street surgeon, have been paying the Zimbabwean authorities thousands of pounds each to take part in a mass elephant cull.

They are among groups of hunters who have been permitted to track and kill whole herds, including their calves, before taking photographs of themselves with the carcasses.

Rumours that Zimbabwe was culling its population of 80,000-100,000 elephants have been circulating for some time, but definitive proof that foreigners have been paying to be involved has emerged only now.

Elephant culls are highly controversial. They typically involve killing every animal in a herd, usually about a dozen strong, and they are condemned as brutal and unnecessary by many conservationists.

Supporters argue that the animals are destroying ecosystems by stripping whole areas of edible foliage and monopolising water sources, and that killing is the only effective method of population control.

Alternatives, such as habitat expansion, relocation and even the use of contraception, are proposed by wildlife campaign groups, but the hunters reject them as unworkable.

Peter Carr, a professional hunting outfitter from Yorkshire, took a party to the Hwange national park last year to cull a herd of 11 elephants, including some “adolescent” calves.

The game reserve, which is Zimbabwe’s largest at more than 5,600 square miles, is said to be home to about 50,000 elephants, more than double its capacity.

One of Carr’s party was Benjamin Chang, a British orthopaedic surgeon who is based in London’s Harley Street. He paid £5,600 to take part, most of which was passed on to the Zimbabwean park authorities.

Chang and Carr shot three elephants each. Unlike conventional trophy-hunters, clients taking part in culls are not permitted to keep any part of the elephant; but they are allowed to take photographs.

Ivory from slaughtered elephants has been legally sold by the Zimbabwean authorities to China and Japan. Last November, Zimbabwe sold nearly four tons of ivory in a one-off sale permitted under international law, for £330,000.

The British hunters, who used specialist rifles to kill the elephants, said shooting was the most humane method of killing, although sometimes more than one shot was necessary to dispatch an animal.

Elephant welfare campaigners were horrified. Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation said: “These days it takes something pretty extraordinary to shock and distress as far as Zimbabwe is concerned. But news of the slaughter of elephants inside national parks still has the power to make you sick to your stomach.”

Michael Wamithi, the elephant programme manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said British hunters paying to kill elephants were unlikely to help Zimbabwean conservation efforts. “Because of the corruption and financial situation I would be surprised if anything at all reached conservation or communities,” he said.

However, Carr said he believed that the money would be used to help maintain the stability of the wildlife in the park.

Carr, author of a forthcoming book, Death in the Bush Veldt, which includes chapters on hunting elephants and other big game, said: “The elephants are slowly turning the land there into a desert. I consider myself a champion for elephants but they must be culled, although it’s such an awful word it makes the bunnyhuggers spit their dummies out.

“No one feels great after culling a herd: it is quite a sombre mood. You have to kill all of them - if any escape they can spread panic in other herds.”

Carr said the cull has been kept low-key. “I was asked last year if I could find clients to go over and shoot 100 elephants as part of the cull,” he said.

“I took one party over [including Chang] and had another 18 clients lined up, half of whom were British, but after that the reports of violence and unrest caused them to back out.”

The overall African elephant population has dropped from 1.3m in 1979 to about 500,000 today, but in some areas they are considered too numerous. South Africa is proposing a cull of elephants in Kruger national park for the first time since 1995.

In Zimbabwe starving people have resorted to killing elephants for food, and recent reports have suggested Mu-gabe’s soldiers are being given meat from carcasses.

Chang, 49, said it was right to use the elephants to feed the Zimbabwean people. “The meat goes to the village. They are queuing at the camp saying, ‘Please give us the meat.’ I was told one elephant will feed one village for 3½ months,” he said.

The hunter, who struck a thumbs-up pose for a picture of him astride an elephant he had shot, went on to shoot a lioness in South Africa. He defended the practice of foreigners paying to kill elephants. “The army could have done the cull themselves but they don’t have the right guns. You can’t use an automatic rifle, that would just be cruel,” he said.

Rich game

Big game hunting is a rich man’s pastime. Hunters must pay a fee to kill each animal, and are usually allowed to keep the skins as a “trophy”.

The so-called big five are the most popular prey. A bull elephant costs upwards of £6,500 and can be as expensive as £37,000. Lions cost between £8,000 and £15,000, buffalos from £6,000 and leopards between £8,000 and £15,000. White rhinos, which are often tranquillised with a dart rather than killed, start at about £5,000.

Article at the following link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5537002.ece

Tags: elephant culling, elephants, Save the elephants, Zimbabwe

8 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 15 2009 | By: baraza

I just got this from Iain Douglas-Hamilton which I wanted to share

Dear Paula, I thought you might like to know that a major three part television series is starting next week in UK. It uses only Kenya presenters (I count myself as one!) to tell the story of STE elephant research. Dr Stephen Chege is our main point of contact with KWS in this film when he came to help us immobilize elephants for collar replacement and for tending to wounded animals.

Best wishes Iain

Our new BBC film series the “Secret Life of Elephants” that is showing on BBC 1 at 9.00 pm on Wednesday the 14th, 21st and 28th January 2009. To tell you a little about the content: Our series shows rare behaviour as elephants act out their emotions - love, lust, jealousy, fear, and anger. It also launches new Kenyan on-screen talent, David Daballen and Onesmas Kahindi from Northern Kenya who join Saba and Iain Douglas-Hamilton in the field to tell the story of The Secret Life of Elephants. The action is in the remote and beautiful Samburu national reserve in Northern Kenya, a peaceful elephant sanctuary where our UK Charity Save the Elephants conducts research in collaboration with the Kenya Wildlife Service. KWS vet Dr Chege demonstrates the art of elephant immobilization for attaching radio-collars and for tending to wounded elephants. We see the death of a matriarch in a river and the remarkable fascination elephants have with their own dead, as well as the adventures of Mountain Bull - an elusive individual who runs the gauntlet through farms to reach a new safe haven where he finds the females he seeks. We see an injured calf whose life hangs in the balance and depends on the care of other elephants. We see group defence as an elephant family unites to defend a darted animal. Our research using state of the art tracking technology reveals the complexity of how elephants make their choices as they navigate down crucial corridors and ‘streak’ between safe areas, balancing needs of food and mates against safety and danger. Samburu is a rare place where elephant behaviour is still natural, often happy, and not dominated by one emotion, the fear of man. However, amidst this peaceful idyll, where the Ewaso Nyiro river runs through the reserve, where local people are tolerant of wild animals, there are ominous signs that ivory poaching may be beginning once again. We see the efforts in Kenya to monitor the illegal killing of elephants in order to secure their future. A conclusion of the film is that research with a local flavour strikes a chord with local people and can lead to community based conservation and co-existence between man and one of the most magnificient species in the world. For more information on elephant behaviour and Save the Elephants’ work see , Saba’s website , and our article on “Elephant Emotion” by Saba and Iain Douglas-Hamilton, in BBC Wildlife Magazine, October 2008. OR to come and see the elephants Please help us raise awareness by forwarding this information to anyone who you think might be interested.

Tags: BBC, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Save the elephants, Secret lives of elephants

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 13 2009 | By: baraza

I’ ve been troubled by recent events that affect elephants. The auction of ivory last year from four Africa countries to raise funds for elephant conservation. The people who made this decision don’t seem to care about the consequences, soon after the sales we heard that Kenya and other countries had made the largest ivory seizure the Chinese (who bought the legal ivory) were involved.

More recently we have heard of elephant poaching in Cameroon and DR Congo, and just as troubling, the latest story from Zimbabwe that to pacify the army, thousands of elephants have been slaughtered for meat.

Joyce Poole of ElephantVoices, and many others are fighting for the rights of elephants. And I think it’s brilliant. Just last year politicians voted to give apes rights in Spain. The significance of this decision is discussed here in Seed Magazine.

Well this could pave the way for all sentient species, elephants, apes, whales and others.

Why are elephants so special? Well, I’ll let this story persuade you.
Fact or Fiction?: Elephants Never Forget

Do elephants really have steel-trap memories?

By James Ritchie, Scientific American

Elephants do not have the greatest eyesight in the animal kingdom, but they never forget a face. Carol Buckley at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., for instance, reports that in 1999 resident elephant Jenny became anxious and could hardly be contained when introduced to newcomer Shirley, an Asian elephant.

As the animals checked one another out with their trunks, Shirley, too, became animated and the two seemingly old friends had what appeared to be an emotional reunion. “There was this euphoria,”  sanctuary founder Buckley says. “Shirley started bellowing, and then Jenny did, too. Both trunks were checking out each other’s scars. I’ve never experienced anything that intense without it being aggression.”

Turns out the two elephants had briefly crossed paths years earlier. Buckley knew that Jenny had performed with the traveling Carson & Barnes Circus, before coming to the sanctuary in 1999, but she knew little about Shirley’s background. She did a little digging, only to discover that Shirley had been in the circus with Jenny for a few months—23 years earlier.

Remarkable recall power, researchers believe, is a big part of how elephants survive. Matriarch elephants, in particular, hold a store of social knowledge that their families can scarcely do without, according to research conducted on elephants at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.

Researchers from the University of Sussex in England discovered that elephant groups with a 55-year-old matriarch (elephants live around 50 to 60 years) were more likely to huddle in a defensive posture than those with a matriarch aged 35 when confronted by an unfamiliar elephant. The reason: they were aware such strangers were likely to start conflicts with the group and possibly harm calves, Karen McComb, a psychologist and animal behaviorist at Sussex, and her colleagues reported in Science.

Other researchers, who studied three herds of elephants during a severe 1993 drought at Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park, found that they not only recognize one another but also recall routes to alternate food and water sources when their usual areas dry up.

The scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York City reported in Biology Letters that pachyderm groups with matriarchs, ages 38 and 45, left the parched park, apparently in search of water and grub, but the ones with a younger matriarch, age 33, stayed put.

Sixteen of 81 calves born in the park that year died in a nine-month period, a 20 percent mortality rate, much higher than the typical 2 percent; 10 of the dead were from the group that remained in the park, where feed and water were scarce.

Researchers concluded that the older elephants recalled a drought in the park that lasted from 1958 to 1961, and how their packs survived the slim pickings by migrating to lusher areas a distance away. None of the elephants that stayed behind were old enough to remember the previous dry spell.

Elephants also apparently recognize and can keep track of the locations of as many as 30 companions at a time, psychologist Richard Byrne of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland and other researchers discovered during a 2007 study at Amboseli.

“Imagine taking your family to a crowded department store and the Christmas sales are on,” Byrne says. “What a job to keep track of where four or five family members are. These elephants are doing it with 30 traveling-mates.”

The scientists tested this memory by placing urine samples in front of female elephants, who thoroughly checked them with their trunks and acted up when they came across one that did not come from a member of their brood, and thereby should not have been there. “Most animals that hang around in packs, such as deer, probably have no idea who the other animals in their pack are,” Byrne says. But elephants “almost certainly know every [member] in their group.”

Such “working memory” is “far in advance of anything other animals have been shown to have,” Byrne adds, and helps the elephant monitor the family units that move, forage and socialize together.

When it comes to smarts, elephants are right up there with dolphins, apes and humans, says WCS cognitive scientist Diana Reiss and colleagues at Emory University in Atlanta. They reported in 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that elephants, like the other mammals in that exclusive circle, are the only animals known to recognize their reflections in a mirror.

Zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants in Nairobi, Kenya, is an authority on pachyderms who has studied them since the 1960s. He recounts becoming so well acquainted with an elephant in Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park early in his career that he could actually walk beside her in the wild. He left the area in 1969 to write his thesis and did not return again for four years. But when he came back, he says, it was as though he’d never left. “She came right back up to me and behaved the same way,” he says, noting that they resumed their friendly strolls.

“They’re long-lived animals, and memory would be a benefit to a long-lived animal, making it more adaptive to circumstances,” Douglas-Hamilton says. “Clearly if elephants experience extremes of climate and they can remember where the food is during a year, they can survive.”

So the next time someone says you have a memory like an elephant, take it as a compliment.

Paula

(Thanks to Melissa Groo of Save the Elephants for sending the story from this link http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/10/content_10636175.htm)

P.S. Have you voted in the poll on the right?

Tags: ape rights, elephant memories, elephants, Ivory, Save the elephants

One response so far

Category: wildlife | Date: Jan 12 2009 | By: baraza

Here are some good news/bad news conservation stories…

1. The Wildlife Conservation Society has declared that the key to saving mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park is saving the guards. Putting their money where their mouth is, they made a donation of $15,000 - enough to save half of the 600 guards for one month at 40$  per person and there are 600 rangers). (The salary of the CEO of WCS is over 450,000 per year)
2. A 9 Kg 140 year old lobster named George has been returned to the sea by a New York restaurant.
3. President George Bush (not related to the above lobster) has designated huge swathes of land as marine reserves in an outgoing gift to America and the world.  It does not affect my opinion of him.
4. UN endorse Organic green revolution not industrial green revolution. “UNEP reported that organic practices in Africa outperformed industrial, chemical-intensive conventional farming, and also provided environmental benefits such as improvedsoil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought”. How come we have not heard about it in Africa where Monsanto is elbowing in aggressively?
5. Over 1000 new species found in the Mekong Delta. They include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, four birds, four turtles, two salamanders and a toad. But, many of the species could be at risk from rapid development in the  the countries of the Greater Mekong area.

Do you have any other good news/bad news conservation stories? Share them with us - leave a comment below

Tags: George Bush, mountain gorillas, New species, old lobster, WCS, WildlifeDirec

3 responses so far

Category: Forests | Date: Jan 11 2009 | By: baraza

Inspiring art from the Oro Verde Rainforest Fund http://www.oroverde.de/

Tags: destruction, Rainforest

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