Dan Koehl

When I started to work with the elephants 30 years ago in the seventies, news about elephants in other locations and countries were only told by mouth, and it took months for news to travel around. Zoologist and directors had their network, but elephant keepers and trainers had to rely on gossip. Now and then, short stories and photos would be snail-mailed, but mostly it was verbal. During morning coffe-break, the leadkeeper would suddeny say; I had a telephone call yesterday night from XY in ZY Zoo, and he said...

Likewise, facts and information about elephants in general were rare, and would be exchanged between keepers as precious gifts.

Not everywhere though. On my first visit to Zürich Zoo in Switzerland 1985, the head elephant keeper Ruedi Tanner showed me news and clippings, which he recieved from news companies in Switzerland. By those means he could be updated with latest information about what was going on with elephants everywhere. But few elephant people had this service payed from their zoo...

In 1993, I bought my first computer. One year later, I discovered different means of Networks with computers through the telephone lines. It was fascinating to chat online, but there were no elephant keepers online...

When I started using Internet in 1995, I hardly found any information about elephants, so I made my first website. It has changed over the years, and is to a certain amount developed by its visitors, since I had a lot of questions the first years, and a lot of feedback, you find it at Absolut Elephant. Unfortunately its not updated since years...

In 1996, I started Elephant-L, a mail list, which served a good cause for same years. Elephant people discussed, and informed each other, and of course briefed about the latest news. But, this list got full with spam in the end, and just caused anger, so I closed it down in the nineties.

In August 2001, I started the Elephant News, trying to collect and organize elephant related articles on the Internet. Because of my work as elephant consultant, the last years often on remote locations in africa, I may sometimes have limited Internet access, but mostly this website is updated daily.

You are welcome to send me any articles, clippings, or just links, with news about elephants!

Email:
ICQ: 404 67 87
Skype: DanKoehl

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