A REPORT BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATION AGENCY Contrary to what the governments of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe have suggested ahead of the...
Eyes wide shut: Southern Africa’s elephants now in the firing line
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african elephants
Botswana’s elephants: myths vs facts
Botswana president, Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi, recently hosted a summit in Kasane for five southern African heads of state to forge a common regional elephant conservation policy....
The Last Elephants – Book review
Did you know that in Africa there is one elephant for every 20 000 people; fewer than 450 000 according to the (most recent) Great Elephant Census of 2016, down from the 3 to 5...
Botswana elephants caught in the middle of a scramble for votes
Photo credit: Francis Garrard President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana said last week that “elephants bleed [the] government coffers”, as “Botswana is indirectly subsidising...
‘Too many elephants’ in Africa? Here’s how peaceful coexistence with human communities can help
HordynskiPhotography/Shutterstock Vicky Boult, University of Reading Africa’s elephant population has plummeted from roughly a million in 1970 to around 400,000 today – a decline...
Botswana elephant poaching ‘no hoax’
Elephants Without Borders, who conducted an aerial research survey in Botswana, has had their wildlife research licence suspended by the Botswana government. See original...
Elephant mystique lingers (South Africa)
This image from a SANParks camera trap survey shows the adult female elephant that was repeatedly identified. SANParks has long held that only a single, elderly elephant clings...
Baby elephants torn from mothers and shipped 7,000 miles to China (Zimbabwe)
Thirty-five young elephants are to be flown from Zimbabwe to zoos in China after being forcibly separated from their mothers in an operation "designed to disorientate, exhaust...
The Sad Story of Lammie the Solitary Elephant at Johannesburg Zoo: Factsheet
Lammie’s mother, Dolly, was captured from the wild in Botswana aged about 3 and arrived at the zoo in 1966. She was euthanised in 2000, aged about 37, when during what should...
Global wildlife regulator to consider relaxing ivory trade bans, prompting fears of huge rise in elephant poaching
The international body responsible for protecting endangered animals is to consider relaxing restrictions on the ivory trade, prompting fears such a move could trigger a huge...
CITES lets world’s worst elephant poaching countries off the hook
Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Thailand and the Philippines, some of the world's worst countries for poaching and illegal trade in ivory have been allowed to exit a key...
Taking Stock: An assessment of progress under the National Ivory Action Plan process
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The National Ivory Action Plan (NIAP) process is an important framework. It was developed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered...
Botswana’s elephant poaching crisis under scrutiny
Reports of elephant poaching in Botswana are under the spotlight with various claims in national and international media that the current adverse situation is driven by...
The problem of an elephant that just wants to stay home
In Africa an elephant dies from a poacher’s bullet every 15 minutes. But in South Africa’s private reserves they’re breeding like bunnies and there’s trouble up ahead. The...
The second Giants Club Summit addresses the survival of our elephants
The second Giants Club Summit meets in Kasane over the next few days, uniting African leadership with global science, finance and influence to accelerate anti-poaching efforts,...
Unbanning US trophy imports: Trump jams a spanner in the works
In a surprising move, President Donald Trump has left-footed his own Department of Interior’s attempts to overturn former president Barack Obama’s ban on the import of wildlife...
The shared nature of Africa’s elephants
Abstract The world's biodiversity is shared by countries that are increasingly recognizing the need for effective responses to human influence and climate change impacts through...
Zimbabwe: Selling elephants to questionable Chinese destinations damages country’s tourism, say critics
By the time Zimbabwe’s new political winds of change reach its wildlife practices – the heart of its potential tourism industry – they appear to ebb to a light Chinese breeze. It...
International concern over welfare of wild baby elephants in trade
Cape Town - Regulations governing the extensive trade in wild caught baby elephants require only that they are housed in suitably equipped facilities, in appropriate and...
Challenges to CITES regulation of the International Trade in live, wild-caught African elephants
CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES OF WILD FAUNA AND FLORA Sixty-ninth meeting of the Standing Committee Geneva (Switzerland), 27 November -1 December...
African Elephant Coalition renews call for global ivory trade ban
European and American conservation leaders today called on governments worldwide to support requests from African nations to end all trade in elephant ivory to safeguard the...
Status of elephant populations, levels of illegal killing and the trade in ivory: A report to the CITES Standing Committee
Introduction Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP17) on Trade in elephant specimens, in paragraph 11, directs the Secretariat, pending the necessary external funding, to: (a) report...
Speculating a Fire Sale: Options for Chinese Authorities in Implementing a Domestic Ivory Trade Ban
Highlights • If ivory speculators in China believe that the domestic ivory trade ban will be finite, they will continue to hoard ivory. • Under a finite ban, speculator...
Alarm over ‘new gag’ on elephant poaching stats
First there was a clampdown on rhino poaching statistics. Now the same is happening with information on elephant ivory poaching. SA National Parks has refused to provide...
Mpumalanga tightens up on trophy elephant hunts
Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) has confirmed that it will not issue permits to hunt trophy elephants with unlimited tusk weights. In a surprise development MTPA...
CITES Elephant trophy hunting quotas 2017- 1188 African elephants may be legally hunted in 2017
CITES CITES LISTING APPENDIX COUNTRY DATE NOTES I 13/09/2007 Included in Appendix I, except the populations of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, which are...
Botswana bans elephant-back rides
According to the NGO World Animal Protection, most tourists go on elephant rides because they love elephants. They don’t know about the intense physical and psychological pain...
Elephant Dawn: The high cost of hanging out with elephants
How could you tell males from females? Were the elephants left-tusked or right-tusked? Who were the matriarchs? Who belonged to which family? How did they communicate? Would she...
South African arrested in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park on poaching charge
A South African, Pieter Jansen van Rensberg, has been arrested on a charge of poaching inside the protected buffer zone of the Mozambique’s Parque Nacional de Limpopo (PNL),...
Time for Action – end the criminality and corruption fuelling wildlife crime
The landmark London Conference in February 2014 brought together heads of state and government representatives to discuss the rise in the illicit trade in wildlife and to sign up...
Problems with trophy hunting in Zimbabwe exposed
Trophy hunting in Zimbabwe’s Matetsi Safari Area is not sustainable at current levels as trophy sizes are declining, there is little scientific data supporting quota sizes and...
Trophy Hunting and Sustainability: Temporal Dynamics in Trophy Quality and Harvesting Patterns of Wild Herbivores in a Tropical Semi-Arid Savanna Ecosystem
Abstract The selective nature of trophy hunting may cause changes in desirable phenotypic traits in harvested species. A decline in trophy size of preferred species may reduce...
The influence of socioeconomic factors on the densities of high-value cross-border species, the African elephant
ABSTRACT Unprecedented poaching levels triggered by demand for ivory in Far East Asia are threatening the persistence of African elephant Loxodonta africana. Southern African...
The struggle over Japan’s ivory market
Japan has ensured the continued existence of its deeply flawed internal ivory market through sly diplomacy at the CITES conference in Johannesburg. However, reports in the...
Estimating economic losses to tourism in Africa from the illegal killing of elephants
Abstract: Recent surveys suggest tens of thousands of elephants are being poached annually across Africa, putting the two species at risk across much of their range. Although the...
Ivory: When is a ban not a ban?
The failure to effectively shut down domestic ivory markets at the recent COP17 in Johannesburg leaves the ban on international ivory trade as little more than an ineffective...
African Elephant Status Report 2016
This report is the most authoritative source of knowledge about the numbers and distribution of African elephant populations across their 37 range states in sub-Saharan Africa....
Exposed: The Dirty Secrets of Japan’s Illegal Ivory Trade
Cape Town - New evidence of Japan’s failure to control illegal ivory trading at a time when Africa’s elephants face extinction is revealed in a damning report just released. The...
Op-Ed: Namibia ducks elephant census
Photo: Namibian elephants (Eric Bauer via Flickr) The results of the most comprehensive survey of African elephants ever undertaken – the Great Elephant Census (GEC) announced...
The Dirty Secrets of Japan’s illegal Ivory Trade
JOHANNESBURG – New evidence of Japan’s failure to control illegal ivory trading at a time when Africa’s elephants face extinction is revealed in a damning report released today*....
Talks Continue on Closure of Domestic Ivory Markets
Providing analysis at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in...
Future trade in ivory dealt major blow yesterday; Trade in live elephants on agenda for today
Providing analysis at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in...
The Battle over Ivory
The future of Africa’s elephants may be decided in Johannesburg at the end of this month. When delegates from around the globe arrive at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the...
A Ban on Commercial Ivory Trade in China: A Feasibility Study Briefing
WWf and trAffic believe that an ivory trade ban in china is feasible and could be effective in contributing to a reduction in current threats to African elephants. Such an...
Poachers kill 26 elephants in Chobe National Park
At least 26 elephants, their faces hacked off and their tusks removed, lay in congealing blood on Botswana’s Chobe National Park floodplain. Poachers had killed them within sight...
How many elephants are there?
After pangolins, elephants are the most poached animals in Africa. But to get to grips with the implications, we need to know how many there are now, were once and will be in the...
Stop Killing African Elephants! – Fondation Franz Weber
Recent surveys in Africa show that elephant populations are falling dramatically across the continent. Data from the CITES-ETIS programme shows that ivory smuggling and seizures...
Risks and Fallacies Associated with Promoting a Legalised Trade in Ivory – Politikon – Ross Harvey
ABSTRACT African elephants are being poached at a rate that threatens their minimum viable population. Some economists have argued that flooding the market with a legal supply of...
African Nations Call On the World to Help Them Save African Elephants – African Elephant Coalition
The African Elephant Coalition (AEC), comprising 29 African countries, is calling on the world to join them in saving elephants. The Montreux Manifesto, agreed at a meeting of...
Export of Swaziland Elephants to US ZOOS : Saving Lives or Making Money
Despite strong opposition and a variety of alternatives, Swaziland’s Big Game Parks appears resolute in its decision to export elephants to US zoos, in what seems to be a...
PRESS RELEASE: Elephant Experts From Around the World Oppose Proposed Import of 18 Elephants from Swaziland to Zoos in Texas, Nebraska and Kansas
For Immediate Release Elephant Experts From Around the World Oppose Proposed Import of 18 Elephants from Swaziland to Zoos in Texas, Nebraska and Kansas “The capture and...