2006-12-28 - Dhenkanal, India.
A wild elephant looking for food Thursday killed a villager in a forest in Orissa, an official said. The elephant attacked Udayanath Behera, 44, a resident of Sartentulia village in Dhenkanal district, in the forest where he had gone to collect firewood, district forest officer M.M. Panigrahi told IANS.
2006-12-28 - Dubbo, Australia.
Australasias oldest male asian elephant has died at a zoo in central-western New South Wales. The one-tusked elephant affectionately known as Heman was found dead by his keepers at Dubbos Western Plains Zoo this morning. Heman moved from Sydneys Taronga Zoo in 2005 to a custom built elephant exhibit at the Western Plains Zoo with his long term partner, Burma. Believed to be just over 50, Heman came to Australia from Singapore in the 1960s.
2006-12-27 - Boston, United States. Tom Ashbrook
When the poachers came into Zambia's Luangwa National Park, they were deadly effective and completely merciless. Then came a UN crackdown on the ivory trade and Mark and Delia Owens. The American zoologist couple had written "Cry of the Kalahari," and been thrown out of Botswana.
2006-12-26 - JAIPUR, India.
Riding an elephant to the top of the amber fort in India's desert state city Jaipur is a must-do tourist attraction, but city living is not ideal for the animals. Now domesticated, they work the tourist trade in a city where, in summer, temperatures peak at around 40 degrees Celsius. In the past, their treatment has been harsh, but UK-based charity Elephant Family has been on a mission to teach owners and riders to treat the elephants better. Giving both financial aid and education to improve co...
2006-12-25 - Jalpaiguri, India.
After four elephants of West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district were killed on being hit by the train, railway trains drivers in the district worshiped an elephant. Forest department sources say the train drivers worshipped the elephant so that they could seek divine help in preventing any further elephant deaths.
2006-12-25 - Baltimore, United States. Nicole Fuller
Facing a record budget deficit, the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore is seeking an additional $4 million in state funding to maintain its operations. This spring, three elephants from the Philadelphia Zoo - Petal, Kallie and Bette - will make Baltimore their new home. An $11 million upgrade is planned for the elephant exhibit, adding 6 acres of space to its existing grounds. The state has pledged $5.5 million for the project.
2006-12-25 - Calcutta, India. Mary K. Brunskill
A wild elephant killed three people by lifting them with its trunk one by one and throwing them on the ground in a forest range in eastern India on Sunday, police said. The three died on the spot and 10 others were wounded. The elephant was looking for food when it encountered the three villagers in the Purlia district.
2006-12-24 - Purulia, India.
Three men were dashed to death by a rogue elephant at Jhalda area in West Bengal's Purulia district today. Police said the incident occurred when villagers suddenly heard the elephant's movement in the area and rushed to investigate. The elephant killed a man from Pawara village and two from Kulma village in Jhalda's Begunkodor area.
2006-12-24 - Baikunthapur, India.
Forest officials in West Bengal on Sunday expressed concern over the rising number of elephant deaths in the region. On Saturday, an elephant's body was found in the Baikunthapur forest of the Jalpaiguri district. The pachyderm is believed to have died under mysterious circumstances.
2006-12-23 - Agartala, India. Pinaki Das
Forest officials in Tripura are concerned over the increase in elephant poaching cases. In one such case, five elephant tusks weighing over five kilograms were recovered from three poachers. Acting on a tip off, Agartala Police set a trap and nabbed the poachers who were attempting to smuggle the tusks to Bangladesh.
2006-12-22 - Anchorage, Alaska, United States. Lauren Maxwell
It was more than a year ago when we first told you that Maggie, the elephant at the Alaska Zoo, was getting the first-ever elephant treadmill in the country. We wanted to bring you an update now. In the months since the treadmill was installed, Maggie has been getting used to it...very slowly. Her keepers have been working with her every day and say Maggie will now venture into the confined area that holds the treadmill and stand on top of it. Although, they have yet to actually turn it on.
2006-12-22 - Gaighat, Nepal. THT Online
Two persons were killed when a wild elephant attacked them at Katari of Udaypur district this morning. One Nara Bahadur Magar, 38, of Dhikuwa of Khotang was killed on the spot when the wild elephant attacked him when he had gone to a local Tawa river for lavatory, police said. The same elephant also trampled Sita Gurung, 45, of Katari VDC to death while she was collection water from a tap.
2006-12-22 - Bukit Tigapuluh, Indonesia.
Two Sumatran elephants were found dead near a community palm oil plantation in Kuantan Mudik sub district - Kuantan Singingi district Indonesia. The two elephants (a bull and a cow ) were discovered in an area adjacent to PT Artelindo Concession recently cleared by the community. The elephants were first discovered by the local community on 2 December following which a WWF team was deployed to field to investigate the deaths.
2006-12-22 - Guwahati, India.
Conservationists in Asom have lashed out at forest officials for shooting dead an elephant, mistaking it to be a killer. The forest officials resorted to the extreme step after an elephant named 'Osama bin Laden' ran amok, killing 27 people. However, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) officials said 'Osama' was not the actual one who created the havoc, but a look-a-like.
2006-12-22 - AYUTTHAYA, Thailand.
Santa Claus got some big helpers in Thailand this week, as pachyderm elves passed out gifts to school children. The elephants, dressed in Santa outfits complete with hats, lumbered through the streets of Ayutthaya, Thailand, and used their trunks to hand out stuffed toys and balloons to the children.
2006-12-22 - RATNANAGAR, Nepal.
The preparations for the International Elephant Race has been almost complete. The competition to be organized by the Regional Hotel Association Chitwan with the co-organizers, Bachhauli VDC, Mrigakunja Forest Users Commmittee Baghmara Buffer zone Community Forest, Chitrasen Buffer zone Community forest and Sauraha Tourism Entrepreneurs' Group, will be held for three days.
2006-12-21 - JAIPUR, India. Prakash Bhandari
In a landmark judgment, the Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court has treated an elephant as a "living being at par with a human being" and ordered payment of Rs 5,99,440 as compensation to the owner of the animal which died in a road accident near the historic Amber palace here in 1988.
2006-12-21 - Memphis, United States. EAZA
We have an opening for a Keeper in our Pachyderm/Hooved Stock area. This position requires a minimum of two years of experience in exotic animal care, including knowledge of training concepts and philosophies needed to work with pachyderms and a varied collection of hooved animals and birds, and a college degree in zoology, biology or a related field (or the equivalent combination of education and experience).
2006-12-21 - , United States.
The world renowned Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey® Center for Elephant Conservation located in central Florida is pleased to announce a unique training opportunity in Elephant Care. Successful graduates of the program will be eligible for employment in the animal departments of one of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey® circus traveling units or permanent elephant facilities. The next training program will begin in April 2007.
2006-12-20 - Wayne, United States. JVC PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS COMPANY
Director/Producer, Dr. Paul Cahill shot his 30-minute Asian Elephant documentary, "The Long Goodbye" using JVC's GY-HD100. The documentary illustrates the conditions faced by 'domestic' elephants in Thailand and the importance of preserving this species. According to Cahill, "The GY-HD100 performed exceptionally well in all kinds of adverse conditions - it was knocked down by elephants, subjected to extreme temperatures and humidity of a tropical forest and launched from the cargo compartment of...
2006-12-20 - Calcutta, India. Soumen Dey
The news item “Death warrant out for rogue Laden” in The Telegraph northeast dated December 15, 2006, said “it should take one single bullet to fell a rogue”. So much ado over a “rogue” elephant! The statement itself sounded like a royal proclamation. As did the recent proclamation by the government to kill the rogue elephant that was, according to media reports, on a rampage in Sonitpur East forest division. (The elephant was killed on December 16).
2006-12-20 - Monroe, United States. Victoria E. Freile
Seneca Park Zoo and Monroe County officials today announcd the outcome of the zoo's Experience Great Things fundraising campaign, and honored its campaign co-chairman, the late Gabe Dalmath. Both announcements were made during a morning news conference at the zoo, 2222 St. Paul St.
2006-12-20 - Vienna, Austria. Weissengruber GE, Egger GF, Hutchinson JR, Groenewald HB, Elsässer L, Famini D, Forstenpointner G. Veterinary University of Vienna
The cushions in the feet of African elephants were examined by means of standard anatomical and histological techniques, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The micromorphology of elephant feet cushions resembles that of digital cushions in cattle or of the foot pads in humans but not that of digital cushions in horses. Besides their important mechanical properties, foot cushions in elephants seem to be very sensitive structures.
2006-12-19 - Chirundu, Zimbabwe. Jani Meyer
Zimbawean elephants are under threat - not only from poachers, but also from game rangers who "execute" rogue animals. In the past few weeks at least two animals were shot dead, in full view of visitors, by National Park staff at Chirundu in the Zambezi Valley.
2006-12-19 - Kuiburi National Park, Thailand. Chariya SENPONG
I have lost my crops due to elephants coming down to feed, hundreds of thousands of pineapples each night for the past ten years. It’s stressful, but if we hurt the elephants, it is our loss; we may forfeit the property our livelihood depends on; a much bigger loss than having the elephants feed on the crops.” Sing Suepsutta, a grey-haired, pineapple farmer expresses sadness about his experiences on his 30 rai farm and his encounters with the Kuiburi wild elephants.
2006-12-19 - Guwahati, India. Indo Asian News Service
A herd of about 100 wild elephants Tuesday went on a rampage in a town in the northeastern state of Assam, seriously injuring two people and damaging many houses and shops. A police spokesman said the elephant herd went berserk in the town of Hojai in Nagaon district, about 180 km east of Assam's main city of Guwahati. The herd consisting of about 100 elephants marched through the main streets and alleys and damaged whatever came in their way - from houses to roadside shops- and also injured two...
2006-12-19 - DHENKANAL, India. Statesman News Service
Thousands of officials, students and local peoplegathered today to watch the ‘soil bathe’ of eighteen elephants including two tuskers near Shyamcharanpur in the municipality area. The sight captivated the audience from 6 am to 6 pm. As evening approached the gathered crowd was beyond the control of the forest officials. The crowd affected the traffic on the way to Shyamcharanpur. According to forest officials the elephants strayed into the municipality areas from Saptasajya and Megha ...
2006-12-18 - DHARMAPURI, India.
A herd of 14 elephants damaged the crops in Podupatti and surrounding villages in Pennagaram taluk on Friday night. According to farmers of Podupatti, the elephant herd has been damaging crops in the past three days during night. About seven acres of cultivated ragi, jowar and a few paddy crops were damaged, they said. They added that several memoranda had been submitted to the forest officials of the range concerned in this regard.
2006-12-18 - Nghe An, Vietnam. Khanh Hoan – translated by Minh Phat
Four wild elephants have been on a rampage in Vietnam’s central Nghe An province for the last 10 days, seriously injuring a man and destroying dozens of hectares of crops. Over 100 households in Bai Lim village in Anh Son district are threatened by the giant animals that seem to be slowly losing their fear of man.
2006-12-18 - Brookfield, United States. John Biemer
Brookfield Zoo is planning to expand its elephant exhibit at least fivefold, build a state-of-the-art indoor house and increase the number of the pachyderms from two to six, zoo director Stuart Strahl said Monday. The improvements, which would cost tens of millions of dollars and be part of a sweeping master plan to modernize the entire zoo, is about seven years from realization and still in the early planning stages, he said. But it comes at a time when some institutions are shuttering their el...
2006-12-17 - GAUHATI, India.
A killer elephant named after Usama bin Laden by fearful villagers was killed by sharpshooters, officials said Sunday. The animal was blamed for 14 deaths in the northeastern state of Assam. "A licensed shooter shot and killed the 10-foot tall bull near the Behali forest reserve in northern Assam," said wildlife warden Chandan Bora.
2006-12-17 - DAMAK, India.
Wild elephants have destroyed properties of three houses at Shantinagar-3 of Jhapa district. Five elephants synchronously entered Jhapa from Luhagadh of West Bengal of India Friday morning devoured the food grains and destroyed other properties worth millions of rupees at the houses of local Narad Poudel, Toyanath Bista and Ram Bahadur Gauli.
2006-12-15 - GARDEN CITY, United States.
Lee Richardson Zoo is once again home to a pair of pachyderms. Two African elephants arrived here on Sunday from the Jacksonville (Fla.) Zoo, and Lee Richardson officials on Tuesday were prepping to release them into the outside yard for the first time. The newcomers, Missy and Kimba, replace Moki and Chana, who were sent to the Florida zoo in October for breeding after about 20 years here.
2006-12-15 - Colin Marshall, Germany.
A German idea of using animal dung to generate electricity is not about to be adopted in New Zealand where zookeepers say they will stick to using it to make fertiliser and compost. Muenchner Tierpark Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich has installed a biogas plant to be fuelled by manure from elephants, rhinos, buffalos and antelopes, and any left-over animal food.
2006-12-15 - Berlin, Germany. Hildebrandt T, Drews B, Gaeth AP, Goeritz F, Hermes R, Schmitt D, Gray C, Streich WJ, Short RV, Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research
Hitherto, it has only been possible to estimate foetal ages from theoretical calculations based on foetal mass. The recent development of sophisticated ultrasound procedures for elephants has now made it possible to monitor the growth and development of foetuses of known gestational age conceived in captivity from natural matings or artificial insemination.
2006-12-15 - Kampala, Uganda.
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has impounded a large consignment of ivory valued at 227 million Ugandan shillings (126,000 U.S. dollars) in Kampala. Paul Kyeyune, URA's Public and Corporate Affairs officer, was quoted by local media Friday as saying the 99 pieces of ivory weighing about 250 kg were intercepted at a tip-off at Kabuusu Tuesday midnight on the outskirts of Kampala.
2006-12-15 - Nairobi, Kenya.
Kenyan wildlife authorities killed a notorious elephant poacher near one of its famed national parks, officials said on Friday, as neighbouring Uganda reported a huge seizure of illegal ivory. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said its wardens shot dead Somali poacher Hussein Ture in a fierce gunbattle at Tsavo East National Park late on Thursday after tracking him and two colleagues in the bush for three months. "We have been chasing him and his group for about 20 years," KWS spokesperson Connie...
2006-12-15 - CLEVELAND, United States.
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is taking on a project that will make it a leader in the effort to save African elephants from extinction. The zoo has unveiled ambitious plans to build a new world-class elephant habitat and conservation center. The $25 million project will create a five-acre space for the elephants quadrupling the space the animals currently have.
2006-12-15 - Bogota, Colombia. Katie Juhl, Reuters
Little baby Pablo (mother is Maggie) is the first African elephant to be born into captivity in Colombia. When he grows up he will literally be the size and weight of a small tractor - weighing some 7 tons (15,400 lbs) and standing at around 4 meters (13 feet) high.
2006-12-14 - Yangzi, China.
The fate of the baiji reminds me of the recent book by Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. For millennia, elephants roamed as far north as Beijing and throughout the Chinese heartland and in fact could still be found in regions south of the Yangzi basin as recently as the 14th century. Elvin argues that the 'retreat' of the elephants, "from northeast to southwest, was the reversed image in space and time of that of the economic development and environment...
2006-12-14 - SANYATI, Zimbabwe. Wallace Mawire
Villagers in some parts of Sanyati District are living in fear of elephants. Villagers interviewed said elephants, which probably escaped from nearby game reserves, posed a danger to their lives. Two women from Dubugwani said nearby game reserves were not fenced. A young man from Chenjiri said he saw a herd of elephants in the area recently.
2006-12-14 - Jaipur, India.
The Jaipur police have seized 46 kg of ivory, worth more than Rs one crore in the international market, from ivory traders in the city. The tusks were probably obtained in Arunachal Pradesh from poachers and brought to the city. Jaipur is one of the biggest centres for carving ivory in the country, from where carved products are usually smuggled to countries like Japan, China.
2006-12-14 - John C. Kuehner, United States.
This may be the last Cleveland winter for Martika, Moshi and Jo, the three African elephants at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The popular pachyderms will be shipped to new homes next year when the zoo prepares for construction of a new elephant exhibit. The exhibit, estimated to cost $25 million, will be four times the size of the pachyderm house, which dates from the 1950s. The building will be doubled in size, large enough to hold 10 elephants, including a male that will allow the zoo ...
2006-12-13 - New Delhi, India.
A Sri Lankan firm which transforms elephant dung into beautiful, eco-friendly paper, has won a major global competition which rewards businesses and projects that put something back into their communities. ‘Maximus’, based in Kegalle at the foothills of Sri Lanka’s central mountainous region, beat more than 800 other projects from 120 countries to win World Challenge 2006 and a US$20,000 grant from Shell.
2006-12-13 - LOS ANGELES, United States.
Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, will conduct a town hall meeting Wednesday at which he and animal activists will discuss their concerns about conditions in which elephants are held in captivity and the reintroduction of his Elephant Protection Act, which would have a major impact in San Diego. During the meeting, longtime animal activist Bob Barker, the host of "The Price is Right," will announce a pledge of $300,000 in a drive to move an African elephant named Ruby from the Los Angeles Zo...
2006-12-12 - New Delhi, India.
Funds for conservation and checking poaching of tigers and several other wild animals have been increased this year, whereas for elephants the allocation has been slashed, according to Union Environment and Forests Ministry. The protection of pachyderms under project elephant received a jolt as its funding decreased from Rs 13.34 crore last year to Rs 11.51 crore this year, down by 13.7 per cent. Significantly, demands for funds from Assam for the project elephant has dropped from Rs 1.30 crore ...
2006-12-12 - Kovalam, India.
Tourists in India were invited to a rather strange wedding when two elephants became partners for life. Workers at a hotel in Kerala state organised the ceremony, which saw 12-year-old Raju marry his ten-year-old bride Rani. Both animals were dressed up for the occasion, with traditional golden headdresses, while music was played during the hour-long ceremony before a fireworks display signalled that the marriage had been finalised.
2006-12-12 - Indianapolis, United States. Diana Penner
Ashlee Kestler was amazed at how much her "baby,'' Zahara, had grown in a little more than two months -- from a shade under 300 pounds to solid 452 pounds. Kestler, 21, won the contest to name Zahara, born Aug. 31 at the Indianapolis Zoo, and today got her private, backstage meeting with the growing calf, her mother, Ivory, and Sophi, the matriarch of the zoo's herd. She had seen Zahara when she was barely a month old and up from her birth weight of 266 pounds.
2006-12-09 - London, United Kingdom. Daniel Kilkelly
Lucy-Jo Hudson was attacked by an elephant while filming for the new series of Wild At Heart. "I was attacked by a big male elephant called Bully. He threw me against a fence with his trunk and bashed me with his trunk and his tusks were in my back. It was very scary," Lucy-Jo told The Sun. "The wrangler said he was just playing, teasing me, but because he was big he did bruise me."
2006-12-08 - Mouadje Bai, Congo. Zeeya Merali, issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine
By the time Steve Gulick arrived, it was too late. The poachers had struck, and elephant carcasses carpeted the floor. "You could step from body to body without your feet touching the ground," he says. "Whole elephant families lay next to each other, gunned down for their tusks." The massacre had taken place in the Mouadje Bai rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), at a spot well known among local poachers for the rich haul of ivory it can yield.
2006-12-07 - Guwahati, India.
Animal lovers are queuing up to get a glimpse of an injured baby elephant in Asom. Two-year-old, Rinki, who was hit by a bus, was brought to the Asom Veterinary College here by his owner for treatment.Veterinary officials said the elephant calf is suffering from a spinal chord fracture. The owner of the elephant, who has already spent 40,000 rupees, is now looking for financial support for the treatment.
2006-12-06 - MELBOURNE, Australia. Emily Power
Females Dokkoon, Kulab and Num-Oi are thriving at Melbourne Zoo after two years in quarantine on the Cocos Islands. To the delight of keepers, resident cow Mek Kapah, who had not had contact with other female elephants for 25 years, quickly warmed to the arrivals. Keeper Manu Ludden, who has forged a strong bond with the elephants after accompanying them in quarantine, said Mek Kapah has had a settling influence on the youngsters.
2006-12-06 - BROWNSVILLE, United States. Associated Press
The 28-year-old elephant Ruth has been at the Gladys Porter Zoo since 1998. Her departure will mark the end of the zoo's elephant exhibit. Milwaukee County Zoo officials plan to begin displaying Ruth later this month. Zoo officials began discussing what to do with Ruth last year, after the death of her companion Macho. Ruth has been the only elephant on display at the zoo since then.
2006-12-05 - Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka.
A she-elephant with a young cub collided with the night mail train from Colombo to Polonnaruwa yesterday. Both died on the spot, derailing the train and paralysing train services on the line for more than 24 hours. The Sri Lanka Wild Life Department says at least 13 elephants have died since January 2006 in railway accidents between the Minneriya and Galoya railway stations in the Polonnaruwa district of the North Central Province.
2006-12-05 - ITAHARI, Nepal.
A wild elephant killed a girl treading upon her body in Sunsari. The wild elephant, which entered near the locality of Bharaul-3, Nadaha, Bichpani killed nineteen-year-old Narmaya BK, a local of the same place, said Forest Officer Murari Sharma. At least eight people so far have been killed from the rampage of wild elephant in the area. Those killed earlier from the wild elephant were from Itahari, Dharan, Panchkanya, Handposa and Pakani.
2006-12-02 - PERNEM, India. HERALD CORRESPONDENT
A herd of elephants went on a rampage and trampled a man to death at Khubarwadi-Pavshi near Goa on Thursday afternoon, besides destroying property and terrifying residents in the area. According to reports, a herd of tuskers strayed in Pavshi village in Kudal-Maharashtra, about 30 kms from Goa’s border.
2006-12-02 - Calgary, Canada. SHAWN LOGAN, CALGARY SUN
Calgary zoo's massive Project Discovery expansion, which will include a new elephant enclosure and Arctic Shores exhibit, was originally given a price tag some 18 months ago. But Calgary's booming construction market has forced the zoo to rethink its plans, looking to shave costs by breaking the expansion into smaller phases and determine a more accurate price for the project, said Grahame Newton, the zoo's director of corporate affairs.
2006-12-00 - Jaipur, India. Department of Dravyaguna, National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur
Ayurvĕda, the oldest existing medical science of India, which is not only responsible for the health of human beings but also, plays an important in Veterinary sciences. In India, history of traditional Veterinary medicine dates back to the era of Mahãbhãrata i.e.5000 B.C., recorded in the form of "Nakula Samhhitã". Hastãyurvĕda is a treatise on elephants, Palkãpya wrote this Samhitã. The present book is available as a complete Samhitã, edited by Pandit Shivadutta Sharma. Hastã...
2006-11-29 - Sydney, Australia.
NSW opposition environment spokesman Michael Richardson claimed figures from the auditor-general showed paid attendance numbers were down almost 30,000 on 2004 figures and running six per cent below budget. But zoo spokesman Mark Williams rejected the claims, saying the enclosure only cost a fraction of the $13 million borrowed for the 12-year master plan refurbishment of the harbourside zoo site.
2006-11-29 - Jambi, Indonesia.
Six wild elephants have devastated hundreds of hectares of oil palm trees belonging to local smallholders in Tebo regency, Jambi. Most of the damage to the farms, located near Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in Sumay district, has been done at night, residents say. "The attacks usually start with the elephants 'crying' to each other. There is nothing we can do (to drive away the beasts)," said Bujang.
2006-11-29 - New Delhi, India. Chetan Chauhan
Of the 40 elephants deaths reported in Orissa since April this year, half have reportedly been killed by poachers. Usage of new tools indicates the involvement of international ivory smuggling rings. In the last ten days alone, six elephant deaths have been reported, of which four are believed to be result of poaching. Professor Raman Sukumar of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, said it appears an international smuggling ring has become active in Orissa.
2006-11-29 - Yunnan, China. Chuncheng, Evening News China Daily
A female tourist from Yunnan Province was badly injured when four elephants attacked her on a road neighbouring a nature reserve in Xishuangbanna over the weekend. The woman was resting with her tour group at the side of the road when the four elephants attacked. Experts said such attacks were rarely reported and that the elephants may have been frightened by someone else nearby.
2006-11-29 - London, United Kingdom. John Plunkett, MediaGuardian.co.uk
The image of the 20-month-old elephant foetus, along with pictures of an unborn dolphin and golden retriever, will feature in a Channel 4 documentary due to be broadcast over the Christmas period. But what both the newspaper reports and Channel 4 omitted to mention was that the image of the elephant was a silicone model. "Somewhere along the line, someone appears to have decided it would make a better story if some of the details were glossed over."
2006-11-29 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock and Ole Whitey
Apparently this was taken in Nashville the fall of 1938 when the Barnes-Sells-Floto show with RBBB Features played here. In the background is the old Broad Street viaduct and the flats are being unloaded out of sight to the right, in what we used to call the Kayne Avenue Yards. I had initially thought this an early 1940s pic but you pointed out that the heavily-loaded wagon sides suggested Barnes.
2006-11-29 - La Crosse, United States. DAN SIMMONS, La Crosse Tribune
It was a true story about three elephants in Tokyo who died during World War II, and it captured the attention of about 30 first-graders at Franklin Elementary School on Tuesday. Amid the angry roar of enemy planes, bombs began to drop over Tokyo. Can you imagine how badly those zookeepers must have felt, having to sacrifice the elephants to save them from the bombing?
2006-11-28 - CHICAGO, United States. The Associated Press
What do a T-Rex skull, two stuffed elephants and a meteorite from Australia have in common? They are among the more than 20 popular exhibits included in an adopt-an-artifact program begun this month by Chicago's Field Museum. The sponsorships start at $25,000 and run as high as $2.5 million for exclusive association with the two African elephants acquired by the museum in 1909.
2006-11-28 - RATNAGAR, Nepal.
The World Elephant Polo Competition began at the elephant polo ground, south of the Meghauli airport here today. Altogether eight teams from Britain, India, Scotland, Sri Lanka and hosts Nepal are taking part in the competition. The six-day competition is being held on a league cum knock-out and organised by the International Elephant Polo Association. The Competition began in Nepal 25 years ago.
2006-11-28 - West Bengal, India.
In a programme implemented by the wildlife wing of the state forest department, all captive elephants in West Bengal will now have their own "identity cards". The 1 mm by 2 mm microchip will contain all details about the elephants, height, weight and a host of other parameters, inserted in the bodies of the elephants by a sub-cutaneous injection
2006-11-28 - Hamburg, Germany.
At the Hamburg Zoo in Germany, elephant experts train zoo keepers on how to handle the giant animals, particularly on how to properly trim their toenails.
2006-11-27 - SELEBI-PHIKWE, Botswana. Onalenna Modikwa
The number of people killed by wild animals in Bobirwa this year has risen to three after an elephant trampled a 39-year-old man to death last week. Like the other two deaths, the man met his fate in the evening when coming from work from farms in the area. The incident took place at Pont's Drift in Mashatu Game Reserve along the South African border.
2006-11-27 - Glasgow, United Kingdom. Ted Chamberlain
Throwing a bit of cold water onto the legend of Loch Ness, paleontologist and painter Neil Clark says the monster was perhaps a paddling pachyderm. Clark noticed similarities in the hump-and-trunk silhouettes of swimming Indian elephants and the serpentine shapes of 1930s Nessie descriptions and photographs, such as the famous 1934 image shown as an inset above.
2006-11-26 - DHARMAPURI, India.
To protect the elephant population in Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri forests, The State Government would take initiatives to establish Cauvery Elephant Sanctuary, covering both Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri forest areas, Forest Minister N Selvaraj said here on Saturday. He said to avoid any life loss and crop loss, the Forest Department had been working to erect solar fencing on the forest borders in the State.
2006-11-26 - Nakuru, Kenya. Winnie Chumo
There was tension in Nakuru’s Kwa Ronda slum when a elephant strayed into the residential area. Residents found the stray elephant from the Mau Forest at around 7 am on Sunday when it started destroying crops and property. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officers arrived a few hours later.
2006-11-26 - Perris, United States. CAROL OLSON
I ARRIVED at Have Trunk Will Travel a half hour earlier than my appointment. There was a long driveway up to the entry gate, so I sat in my car and waited for the excess time to pass. I was at the Perris-based elephant preserve to realize a lifelong dream to ride an elephant. The ranch promotes the understanding and preservation of the endangered Asian elephant and profits from giving rides, doing shows, special events and movies and commercials. The funds are used to care for the elephants and ...
2006-11-25 - Buffalo, New York, United States. Worth1000
In this contest we want you to hide an elephant... hide an elephant as brilliantly shown in the themepost by BrettRobertson! Of course, you're free to show them hiding in urban areas - even silly areas - as well! Suprise us!. Voting until 11/25/2006
2006-11-25 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
This is a picture from my collection, taken the same day and presents a more detailed view of the show. Johnny: Just awesome, those photos of Bill Woodcock, Black Diamond and A.M. Cauble overland circus and amazing to me is this true story. Bear with me. A few years back I booked our family acts with a friend of mine who had a nice canopy type Wild West Show with bucking bulls, bronks, trick riding, etc.
2006-11-25 - Chesterbrook, United States. FlashPuzzleZone.com
Can you solve the daily jigsaw puzzle? Puzzle Description: Group of elephants including baby elephant. Daily Jigsaw Puzzle from the FlashPuzzleZone.com.
2006-11-24 - Auckland, New Zealand. nzherald.co.nz
In Animals in the Womb, to be shown on the National Geographic Channel in the US next month and on Channel 4 in the UK next year, programme makers portray the extraordinary journey into life of an elephant, a dolphin and a dog - from a single cell to a baby mammal. The elephant shows signs its ancestors may not have lived on land, but in the sea. Images of a four-month old elephant embryo show how the baby develops kidney ducts most commonly found in freshwater fish and frogs. They are thought t...
2006-11-24 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Johnny Rodrigues, Chairman for Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force
The news of the capture of 12 juvenile elephants by Shearwater Adventures from Hwange National Park is fairly widespread by now. I have just returned from a 3 week trip and was given the distressing information while I was out of the country. I released the story to the media while I was away and now that I am back, I would like to state that the ZCTF is disgusted and disappointed that this cruel practice has been allowed to take place.
2006-11-24 - Pretoria, South Africa. Shakespeare A, Strydom S., Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria
A practical method was developed to assess the extent of burns suffered by elephants caught in bush fires. In developing this method, the surface areas of the different body parts of juvenile, subadult and adult elephants were first determined using standard equations, and then expressed as a percentage of the total body surface area. When viewed from a distance, the burnt proportion of all body segments is estimated, converted to percentages of total body surface area, and then summed to determ...
2006-11-24 - Agartala, India. Pinaki Das
The West Agartala Police today said that they have recovered five elephant tusk from poachers. Police said that acting on a tip-off, they arrested three poachers from whom the five tusks weighing more than five kilogram were recovered on Wednesday night. According to official record, there are around 50 elephants in Tripura and a proposal of Project Elephant is pending in New Delhi to protect the mammoths.
2006-11-23 - Auckland, New Zealand. Press Release: Auckland City Council
An exhibition of paintings by Auckland Zoo elephants Kashin and Burma to raise funds to support conservation projects in the wild, is about to go on display at Auckland's Reef Gallery.All profits from the exhibition will go to the Auckland Zoo Conservation Fund, which supports a range of overseas and local conservation projects.
2006-11-23 - BHUBANESWAR, India.
It was a fight that even surprised the Forest officials of Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR). A duel between a tiger and an elephant in which the big cat prevailed. The tiger reserve rarely has witnessed such incidents in the past although tigers are known to kill elephant calves. Every year, two or three calves are hunted by the tigers in the reserve.
2006-11-23 - Vienna, Austria. Weissengruber GE, Egger GF, Hutchinson JR, Groenewald HB, Elsasser L, Famini D, Forstenpointner G.Department of Pathobiology, Veterinary University of Vienna
The uniquely designed limbs of the African elephant, Loxodonta africana, support the weight of the largest terrestrial animal. The micromorphology of elephant feet cushions resembles that of digital cushions in cattle or of the foot pads in humans but not that of digital cushions in horses. Besides their important mechanical properties, foot cushions in elephants seem to be very sensitive structures.
2006-11-23 - DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania. George Obulutsa
Patrols in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park have cut poaching and increased the population of black rhinoceros, elephants and buffalo, a paper to be published on Friday in Science magazine shows. "The animals are 'telling' us poaching is down now that there are 10 to 20 patrols a day compared to the mid-1980s when there might be 60 or fewer patrols a year," said Hilborn, a professor at University of Washington in the United States, in a statement ahead of the paper's publication.
2006-11-22 - SEATTLE, United States.
For the first time in four years Gary Larson is releasing a page-a-day calendar of some of his greatest hits, in stores now. All his earnings from the 3 million calendars printed, about $2 million according to publisher Andrews McMeel, will go to Conservation International for the organization's work to help end the illegal trade in Asian elephants, Indochinese tigers, Asiatic black bears, pangolins, freshwater turtles, and Siamese crocodiles in Cambodia.
2006-11-22 - Spartanburg, United States. Associated Press
An Asian elephant who starred in TV commercials and music videos and was a star An Asian elephant who starred in TV commercials and music videos and was a star at Hollywild Animal Park has died. Donna was 48. The 8-foot, 9-inch tall elephant died suddenly Friday, her 8,000 pounds hitting the ground moments after she was running around and kicking up sand, said David Meeks, executive director and co-owner of the park in rural Spartanburg County.
2006-11-22 - Los Angeles, United States. Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times
Remember Ruby? The 45-year-old female African elephant has lived more than half her life at the Los Angeles Zoo. She just hasn't been on exhibit for the last two years due to the logistics of moving elephants around to accommodate the slow, complicated process of constructing the new pachyderm exhibit. "I haven't dismissed anything," zoo Director John Lewis said in a brief interview before the meeting on zoo grounds, though he conceded it was "unlikely" that Ruby would remain in Los Angeles.
2006-11-22 - Luangwa, Zambia. I.P.A. Manning
Elephants continue to be poached for their ivory and meat in Zambia: last week in the West Petauke Game Management Area of the Luangwa Valley, close to my camp on the Luangwa river, a cow herd was all but obliterated by a poaching gang. The meat from these elephant, from hippo and our now decimated herds of buffalo, is carried to the villages of Rufunsa and Lukwipa on the Great East Road, which links Malawi with the capital, Lusaka, and sold openly to motorists; the ivory, we now know, follows t...
2006-11-22 - Quang Nam, Vietnam. Vu Hoang (translated by Hoang Bao)
Four elephants Wednesday morning destroyed over 15 ha of rice and crops in central Vietnams Quang Nam province, local authorities said. The Tra Doc commune government said three adults and one baby elephant also destroyed dozens of sentry boxes guarding the fields in the commune. Early this month, the elephants demolished one house, but its seven occupants luckily escaped unharmed. A sentry squad has been formed to keep guard against the rouge animals. Quang Nam has been plagued by similar eleph...
2006-11-22 - Surin, Thailand. Bart
I took this one when I was myself riding an elephant! It's important to mention that these elephants are in the streets because of the Annual Round-Up Show. Else, Surin is a lot more quiet.
2006-11-21 - Jaipur, India.
Brightly painted elephants, spangled camels, dancing girls, fire-breathers and sword-wielding soldiers greeted guests at City Palace in Jaipur, India, on Friday in a traditional procession last performed for Queen Elizabeth II when she visited the city 42 years ago. A dinner in the dazzling royal apartments followed, hosted by HRH Bhawani Singh and HRH Padmini Devi, the maharaja and maharani of Jaipur, in honor of a Cartier-sponsored elephant polo match to benefit the local animal shelter, Help ...
2006-11-21 - Washington, United States.
At 12 months, an elephant fetus is an average of 18 inches long and weighs approximately 26 pounds. It can use its trunk, curling it right up into its mouth and over its head. From "In the Womb: Animals" CGI Artist, Steve Gomez
2006-11-21 - Mongpong, India. dailyindia.com
A speeding train in Mongpong, North Bengal, has run another elephant, taking the pachyderm death toll in the state to five since May. This is the second time that an elephant has been killed in the area in the last week. About 300 to 350 of them are alive in Northern Bengal region. If it continues like this, such as the five elephants that died, and railway authorities do not take any steps to prevent such incidents, then people will stand in front of the trains to protest against this. This can...
2006-11-21 - DEHRADUN, India.
Three women were trampled to death by elephants in the Rajaji National Park in Haridwar district of Uttaranchal, police said here on Tuesday. Two women who had gone to collect fodder in Jattowali Bagh and Kadachh area near the wildlife reserve were trampled by a herd of elephants on Monday, they said. In another incident, a woman in Latowali area died after an elephant charged at here the same area of the park. The bodies of the women were later recovered and sent for post-mortem, police added.
2006-11-21 - Jorhat, India.
Police officials in Jorhat district, one of the strongholds of the outlawed Ulfa, today confirmed that elephants had destroyed several makeshift camps of the militant group on the chaporis — Assamese for sandbank — off Neamati. “We had information about the rebels setting up camps on these small islands and were planning to take action. But the elephants did the job for us,” a senior police officer said.
2006-11-21 - Francistown, Botswana. Moses Maruping, allafrica.com
The Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, is currently grading accommodation facilities such as hotels and lodges according to acceptable world standards. Commenting on the problem that Botswana is currently faced with due to the high number of elephants and ivory stockpile, Mokaila said that at the WTM, he met with the Head of CITES policy team for UK, Trevor Salmon and compared notes and shared experiences on how to lobby other countries to note that the revenue generated through the ...
2006-11-20 - Seoul, South Korea. John M. Regan
No longer a combat soldier, I became a desk jockey in charge of a computer; a “chairborne ranger.” For a pleasant diversion I decided to volunteer at the Seoul Grand Park Zoo. My wife explained my pre-military experience with elephants which included some time with Jack Hanna at the old Central Florida Zoo and a brief apprenticeship with Bill “Buckles” Woodcock at Ringling Brothers.
2006-11-20 - Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Guy Rogers
ELEPHANTS have been re-introduced into the Somerset East area where they used to occur in passing herds along the Little Fish River. The manager of Kamala Game Reserve, Dale Cunningham, said yesterday the release was the fulfilment of a dream for his father-in-law, Lud de Bruijn. The elephants were acquired from Shamwari through a deal which is facilitating the spread of game in the province. Shamwari carried the cost of the darting and Kamala the cost of transport, with no money required for th...
2006-11-20 - Tamil Nadu, India. Natarajan Sivaganesan Ph.D Elephant Ecologist
Two female elephants, Palani Kovil (Sumathi - + 35) and Madurai Krishnan Kovil (Thanalashmi + 30)died in Tamil Nadu, South India. This unfortunate even occured within a week (1-10 November 06) due to serious ailments in both the cases, concluded by the expert who performed the postmortum. These elephants used by the temple authorities for daily pooja's over several years.
2006-11-20 - San Antonio, United States.
The San Antonio Zoo currently has a need for a Zoo Keeper in our Elephant Department. Duties include daily cleaning, feeding, and maintenance of animal exhibits. Zoo Keepers observe, evaluate, and report animal behavior and condition to their supervisor on a daily basis.
2006-11-20 - CHANDIGARH, India.
The Centre has sanctioned an amount of Rs 90.75 lakh for setting up of an Elephant Rehabilitation Centre in Haryana, Minister of State for Forests and Tourism Kiran Choudhary said here on Monday. A proposal for the establishment of such a centre was sent to the Central government which approved it and released Rs 50 lakh as the first instalment for the current financial year, she said.
2006-11-20 - NEW DELHI, India. Rajesh Sinha
Nearly 300 persons are killed every year by wild elephants in India. The figure was as low as 200 till year 1999-2000 - an indicator of the growing human-elephant conflict. In India, elephant habitats have fragmented into 88 patches in the country, and this is increasing under pressure of human population. With their habitats under pressure, elephant herds have moved into areas they have not been seen in for decades.
2006-11-20 - JAIPUR, India. Natures Corner
Eighteen protesters from organizations across India were arrested Friday at Jaipur's polo ground as they demonstrated against a game of elephant polo, a sport they say is cruel to the elephants. The protesters say sharp steel hooks used to prod the elephants into obeying their riders cause open wounds, which become painfully infected and are slow to heal. Use of the hooks was not allowed during the actual polo match on Saturday after a campaign against them by animal welfare groups, Elephant Fam...
2006-11-20 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
This is a picture , taken at the Rochester, Ind. Quarters, of a second act being trained later for Mrs. Beatty. The elephant chosen was "Anna May", namesake of the elephant that was in our family for so many years. Eddie Allen later told me that this number was really "touch and go" and in fact, at the dress rehearsel the night before the Cole Show's indoor opening in Chicago, "Anna May" unloaded the cats and made an exit right thru the side of the arena.
2006-11-19 - Washington, United States. National Zoo
National Zoo's Asian elephant calf, Kandula, is turning five this month! Come celebrate with us. The birthday party will feature traditional Sri Lankan dances, a cake and presents for Kandula, scientist talks, crafts for kids, Sri Lankan tea, and much more. Come to the Zoo's Elephant House for all the festivities.
2006-11-19 - COIMBATORE, India.
The forest department is well into the job of developing an elephant corridor, by linking the rainforest patches within the private estates in Valparai and also linking these patches with the nearby Reserve Forest area, with the help of private estates in the region, as a permanent solution to the man-animal conflict. The plan is in the initial stage, wherein the forest department, this year, has been raising 10,000 rainforest seedlings. The project was expected to yield fruit in about 10 years.
2006-11-19 - Kathmandu, Nepal. Yahoo News
Nepalese hunters have captured a wild elephant that trampled to death at least 12 people and injured several others in the country's southeast. A team of 15 forestry officials found the elephant on Saturday after a two week search and shot it with a tranquilizer in the jungles of Sunsari district, about 310 miles southeast of the capital, Katmandu, said Ajit Karna, chief forest official in the area.
2006-11-19 - Guwahati, India. Indo-Asian News Service
Four members of a family, including an infant, were trampled to death Sunday by wild Asiatic elephants in Assam, the latest in a series of attacks on human beings, wildlife officials said. A forest official said a herd of about seven elephants entered village Borbhugia in Sonitpur district, about 270 km north from here. 'The elephants after entering the village tore apart a hut and killed the entire family of four who were sleeping. The dead include a seven month old baby boy,' Chandan Bora, a w...
2006-11-19 - Kathmandu, Nepal.
A rouge bull elephant in Nepal's east was tranquilised and his tusks cut after 12 deaths were attributed to a three-month rampage by the endangered animal, a park ranger said. "On Saturday the team shot the elephant with tranquiliser darts. The elephant's tusks have been removed," said Shiva Kumar Budhatoki, a ranger from Sunsari district forestry office.
2006-11-19 - CALCUTTA, India.
Speeding trains killed two elephants in separate collisions over the past week in India, officials said Sunday. A passenger train hit an elephant as it crossed a track in the northern Dooars region of eastern India's West Bengal state Saturday night, said Tapas Bose, a forest officer in the district. A few days earlier, another elephant died after a freight train knocked it over in a densely forested area also in the Dooars region, Bose said.
2006-11-19 - WASHINGTON, United States.
When you're young, not much beats your birthday and the National Zoo's baby elephant celebrated his on Sunday. Kids and adults turned out to watch Kandula, the zoo's youngest elephant, open presents for his fifth birthday.The celebration also featured scientist talks, crafts for kids, and a "cake".
2006-11-19 - Jaipur, India.
A polo match with players riding on elephant went undeterred in spite of the protest by animal lovers here. Prominent personalities from the corporate world and Bollywood were present to see the match as elephants went on a roll during the match at the Ram Bagh. Palace Polo grounds. Among these celebrities, the former Indian Cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin and his wife Sangita Bijlani happened to be the cynosure as they played in the match representing the opposite sides.
2006-11-18 - FORDLAND, MISSOURI, United States. Murray Hill
My name is Betty. I'm a retired circus elephant living in Fordland, Missouri. ARC rescued me before I was about to be euthanized. I love ARC. I spend my days playing in my backyard. There are a lot of acres for me to roam, but when I get tired I go to the home ARC built for me. Right now, ARC is looking for kind people to donate money, time, or equipment to help subsidize my expenses. Please, keep me in mind when you have a dollar or two to spare :) Please, check out my website http://www.aepif-...
2006-11-18 - Auckland, New Zealand.
Party to mark birthdays of Auckland's 2 elephants called off because of poor weather. Auckland Zoo has postponed a birthday party for its two elephants today because of poor weather. Burma and Kashin were due to be painted in traditional Thai style to mark the occasion. An elephant sized cake was baked, but it has been put back in the pantry until tomorrow. Kashin is celebrating her 38th birthday and Burma is 24.
2006-11-18 - Coventry, United Kingdom. Mary Dormer Harris
The elephant is seen, not only as a beast so strong that he can carry a tower - Coventry's castle - full of armed men, but also as a symbol of Christ's redemption of the human race. The animal, according to one of the "bestiary" stories, is supposed to sleep standing, leaning against a tree. Hunters sever the trunk, and he falls helpless to the ground, until a small elephant approaches and pulls him up with his trunk.
2006-11-18 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
For those of you astonished viewers who think I can identify these elephants from the rear, I must confess, my father wrote their names on the back of the picture:1. Blanche 2. Jean 3. Big Babe 4. Big Jenny 5. Louie 6. Little Babe 7. Tony 8. Katie 9. Nellie 10. Wilma 11. Tessie 12. Little Jenny 13. Carrie 14. Trilby.
2006-11-18 - Lampang, Thailand.
The Mission of the Elephant Reintroduction Foundation is to realize the Vision of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, to solve the problems facing all elephants in Thailand through returning domestic elephants to the wild and restoration of the habitat of wild elephants, as well as promoting appropriate management of all elephants in Thailand.
2006-11-18 - JALPAIGURI, India.
An elephant was run over and killed by a train at Sevak in Kalimpong forest division today, forest officilas said. The incident occurred when the animal was straying over the track and did not move away seeing the approaching train, the sources said.
2006-11-18 - Nyimba, Zambia. I.P.A. Manning
The recent killing of a herd of elephant and general contempt for the law in the Nyimba district of Zambia, suggest the collusion of Government officers in a commercial bushmeat and ivory poaching ring. On Sunday 12 November 06, a matriarchal herd of elephant was attacked in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley by an AK47 wielding poacher, accompanied by seven unarmed meat carriers; an adult female and a juvenile killed - possibly another killed, and one seen crossing the river with blood on its side.
2006-11-18 - Surin, Thailand.
The Surin Elephant Round-up Show has been organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand since 1960 and has been well-received internationally. The everyday life of the Thai elephant and its keeper is the central theme of the world-famous Surin elephant round-up held annually. Tickets for The "Elephant Show": 500 Baht and 200 Baht.
2006-11-17 - BISMARCK, United States. ELOISE OGDEN
Paleontologist John Hoganson plans to find out if any of the three mastodon teeth that were found in an attic in London, Ontario, about a year ago belong to the huge Highgate mastodon that stands in the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck. After all, the skeleton came from the nearby area of Highgate, Ontario. But that was 116 years ago in the 1890s.
2006-11-17 - Thekkady, India.
The very sound of the word Thekkady conjures up images of elephants, unending chains of hills and spice scented plantations. In the Periyar forest of Thekkady is one of the finest wildlife reserves in India, and spread across the entire place are picturesque plantations and hill towns that hold great opportunities for treks and mountain walks.
2006-11-17 - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India.
The Forest Department has virtually blocked the arrival of out-of-work North Indian, especially Bihar, elephants to the state. Chief Wildlife Warden V Gopinathan has asked his Bihar counterpart to get his no objection certificate and only then allow the transit of elephants from Bihar to Kerala. Says Gopinathan: ‘‘During the last few months an unusually large number of elephants have been transported to the state from Bihar. By law we cannot stop then from coming. But if it affects the well-...
2006-11-17 - NEW DELHI, United States. Nita Bhalla
This weekend, the Elephant Polo Cup, sponsored by Swiss jeweller Cartier and co-organised by the brother-in-law of Prince Charles, Mark Shand, will be held in Jaipur, Rajasthan's capital. Animal rights activists in India have called on the eve of a controversial tournament for the elite, centuries-old sport of elephant polo to be banned due to what they say is the pain and suffering it causes the animals. Privileged royals and the rich have been playing the game for hundreds of years in the dese...
2006-11-17 - Kandy, Sri Lanka. Jamie Lorimers
There are about 3 000 wild elephants and more than 20 million people in Sri Lanka, an island the size of Ireland. Before the Brits arrived at the end of the eighteenth century there were less than a million people and many, many more elephants. We shot the majority of them, destroyed their habitat for tea and (perhaps indirectly) catalysed a human population explosion.
2006-11-17 - EL CAJON, United States. Sharon A. Heilbrunn, UNION-TRIBUNE
The 60th annual Mother Goose Parade will march down the streets of El Cajon on Sunday. The popular parade will also feature “celebrity” elephants, said City Councilwoman Jillian Hanson-Cox, who also serves on the parade's board of directors. “These elephants have been used in commercials, TV shows and movies,” she said. “They've appeared in 'The Jungle Book' and 'Tarzan.' ”
2006-11-17 - Bowen Hills, Australia. Elizabeth Allen
THE first thing that strikes a reader about Steve Bloom's Elephants! is that it is quite simply a beautiful book. The South African-born photographer depicts elephants in almost every situation in this coffee-table tome: taking mud baths, swimming, fighting, holding trunks and even mating in the pink glow of sunset. Bloom, a highly successful wildlife photographer now based in Britain, gives an insight into the nature, or soul of the elephant – an animal once slaughtered for its ivory to make ...
2006-11-17 - Bolton, United Kingdom. Saiqa Chaudhari
Cllr Cliff Morris, leader of Bolton Council, showed a model of what the new elephants would look like to Year Four pupils at St Osmund and St Andrew's RC School in Breightmet. The present herd of elephants that have stood in the pedestrianised area of Newport Street for the past 25-years are to be removed because they are past their best. Three new models, costing a total of £30,000, are to take their place.
2006-11-17 - , United Kingdom.
Bolton is a large town in the north of England, 53 degrees 34' North 2 degrees 26' West. In 1890, Major Ottley Perry incorporated the elephant into the former Bolton County Borough arms in respect of the (unproven) connection between Bolton and the ancient Diocese of Mercia, in the old county of Coventry, created by Lancastrian King Henry VI. The Diocese included Bolton, and for that reason a Lancashire Red Rose, and the elephant is shown in the Armorial Bearings, as in the Coventry coat of arms...
2006-11-17 - Chester, United Kingdom. Chester Chronicle
CHILDREN will get the chance to name the new baby elephant born at Chester Zoo last Sunday. The male Asian elephant calf was born at 4.19am on Remembrance Sunday inside the zoo's new elephant house, Elephants of the Asian Forest. Wiewers of BBC's flagship children's programme Blue Peter will be invited to enter a competition to name the calf and the programme will be broadcast live from the zoo on December 6.
2006-11-17 - PITTSBURGH, United States. Barry Newman, The Wall Street Journal
The Animal and Plant Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking advice from the public on what to do about problem feet in elephants. The deadline for sending in ideas is Dec. 11. Hundreds have already arrived. Such as: "Elephants' feet are being destroyed by their confined environment." "They should be able to walk on grass, not concrete." "Some elephants never need their toenails trimmed and some elephants need them continuously trimmed."
2006-11-17 - NEW DELHI, India.
Animal rights activists in India have called on the eve of a controversial tournament for the elite, centuries-old sport of elephant polo to be banned due to what they say is the pain and suffering it causes the animals. Privileged royals and the rich have been playing the game for hundreds of years in the desert state of Rajasthan, dotted with the fading palaces of once powerful royals, and still stage regular events.
2006-11-16 - Washington, United States. Daya Gamage, US National Correspondent for Asiantribune.com
A cultural and educational program about Sri Lanka is being held at the National Zoo in Washington on 16 and 19 November jointly sponsored by the Sri Lanka embassy, Smithsonian National Zoological Park and Friends of National Zoo. The highlight of the program is the celebration of the fifth birthday of the Sri Lankan baby elephant ‘Kandula.’
2006-11-16 - Houston, United States. SALATHEIA BRYANT
As Houston Zoo officials unfurled a banner to display the newly selected name for its baby elephant, the precocious pachyderm was putting on a show of his own, bulling his way through the thick cables surrounding the elephant exhibit and rumbling after the adult females. Since his Oct. 1 birth, he has gained 91 pounds, tipping the scale at 474 pounds. Officials say Mac is the largest Asian elephant born at a U.S. zoo.
2006-11-16 - Helsinki, Finland.
A mammoth bone was found when the sea bed in front of Helsinki was dredged. The bone is at least 40,000 years old but it is expected to be 120,000 years old. It is 11th finding related to mammoths in Finland. The finding is somewhat weird because the sediment attached to the bone is not typical to the area but to Karelia. Additionally similar findings have not been done earlier from the same era. Thus the origin of the finding will be checked carefully.
2006-11-16 - Washington, United States. http://news.sawf.org/
With her wedding to beau Arun Nayar fast approaching, British beauty Elizabeth Hurley is determined that no matter what, she’s going to be the epitome of elegance, and has thus started taking elephant riding lessons. The Bedazzled star is to arrive on the back of an elephant for the couple’s Hindu wedding ceremony and thus is nervous that she won’t know how to sit atop the giant mammal on her big day.
2006-11-16 - Keonjhar, India. NDTV Correspondent
Elephants in Orissa face extinction if they continue to die or be killed at the current rate, according to official and unofficial counts. Spreading mining activity in the region is blamed for man's conflict with the elephant. At least 60 elephants have been killed in the past two years, official estimates say - and unofficial reports say 200 elephants died during the same time.
2006-11-16 - EAST LONDON, South Africa. Mark Stansfield
AFTER an absence of almost 200 years, free-roaming elephants can once again be seen not far from the hub-bub of modern East London – and to witness these majestic creatures in their natural habitat is a thrill not to be missed. The elephants, consisting of two adult females, a sub-adult and two calves, have been released into the 2300-hectare Mpongo Private Game Reserve located about 30km outside the city on the road to Sutterheim.
2006-11-16 - Puducherry, India.
A 45-minute "minor" surgery was conducted here today on an elephant to remove pus from an abscess that had developed on the back of the animal's tail. As soon as the abscess was noticed, the services of a retired professor of a veterinary college of Kerala, K C Panicker, were sought and he rushed here to treat the elephant, said a spokesman of Sri Manakula Vinayakar temple which owns the elephant.
2006-11-15 - Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Darren Naish
Episode 2 of the BBC’s series Planet Earth included amazing footage of the elephant-killing lions of Savuti in Chobe National Park, northern Botswana. In 1990 Jouberts were estimating that about 20% of the Savuti lion’s diet was made up of elephant. And if you’re wondering: YES, the Savuti lions have been recorded attacking and killing adult elephants, and in 1997 Jouberts published The Lions of Savuti: Hunting with the Moon which records something like 15 years of observations covering th...
2006-11-15 - London, United Kingdom.
A woolly mammoth has been placed in Trafalgar Square to highlight the effects of climate change. The 11.5ft (3.5m) replica was unveiled by the Natural History Museum to warn how life in Britain could undergo radical change in the next 50 years."The British way of life and Homo britanicus could go the same way as the woolly mammoth," the museum warned.
2006-11-15 - St. Louis, United States. Diane Toroian Keaggy
St. Louis Zoo elephant Sri still carries a dead fetus a year after it died in utero. The Asian elephant's calf died on Nov. 19, 2005, after a 22-month pregnancy. It was to have been Raja's first offspring. Keepers still don't know why the calf died, but Zoo health chief Randy Junge suspects it never positioned itself properly. Still, officials say she is healthy and requires no medical intervention. "Her health is very good," said Martha Fischer, who manages the Zoo's elephant program. "Her bloo...
2006-11-15 - Madurai, India.
A Rs three crore plan to provide a concrete roof for a 725 metre path used by elephants to the Palani Sri Dhandayudhapaniswamy temple, 120 km from here, has been sent for government approval, officials said. Officials said the total length of the path is 886 metres. There are 45 'four pillared' mandapams along the pathway which cover/provide shelter for 161 metres. The remaining distance is uncovered.
2006-11-15 - New Delhi, India. Peter Foster
Mark Shand, the elephant conservationist and brother of the Duchess of Cornwall, is facing protests from eminent animal welfare experts over plans to stage an elephant polo match in the Indian city of Jaipur this weekend. Mr Shand, author of the best-selling Travels on my Elephant, said he organised the match, sponsored by the jewellers, Cartier, to give dignity back to the elephant. A host of international celebrities will take part in the match before being encouraged to put pressure on govern...
New Line Cinema has launched development of a feature based on the life of Daphne Sheldrick, a pioneer in efforts to save orphaned baby elephants, reports Variety. Sheldrick was named a dame by Queen Elizabeth II earlier this year for her work, the first such honor to be awarded in Kenya since the country became independent in 1963. New Line is finalizing a life rights deal with Sheldrick, whose work was the focus of a "60 Minutes" report in April as well as 2005 BBC documentary "Elephant Diarie...
2006-11-15 - Little Rock, United States.
Laura came out to the zoo six or seven years ago. She came out and we toured her around the facility with the elephants with the staff and at that point really became supportive of the zoo and of the mission, zoo director Mike Blakely says.
2006-11-15 - Vienna, Austria. JR Minkel
Researchers have unearthed the graves of three Stone Age infants that may ultimately bear on the question of whether humans interbred with Neandertals. The rare find, from a 27,000-year-old site in Austria, includes two bodies that might be twins sheltered under a mammoth's shoulder blade. The twins had been protected from the elements by the mammoth bone and were very well preserved, says team member Christine Neugebauer-Maresch of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences ...
2006-11-15 - Jaipur, India. Rajan Mahan
The elephant polo cup on Saturday in Jaipur was to be a highlight of the current polo season. But a petition by animal rights activists claims the jumbos are trained with ''brutal methods'' that inflict a lot of pain. "Our big objection is that the elephant is a Schedule 1 animal in the Wildlife Act and yet the jumbos will be misused for this game for commercial reasons.
2006-11-15 - Bristol, United Kingdom. New Scientist
Anecdotes about African elephants going on alcohol-fuelled rampages after eating the fermented fruit of the marula tree or drinking alcohol are probably incorrect, says Steven Morris at the University of Bristol, UK. It is more likely that "drunk" bulls are just defending a prized food source, says Morris. The study will be published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology next year.
2006-11-15 - Washington, United States.
The National Zoo's only giraffe Randle is gone. The National Zoo moved Randle in preparation for the renovation and expansion of its Asian elephant exhibit, where the giraffe has lived since 2003. Although construction isn't scheduled to begin until the spring, zoo officials say they relocated Randle now so that he could avoid D.C.'s winter weather. Other animals at the zoo's elephant exhibit also will be moved over the next year, including a hippo, two pygmy hippos and two capybaras.
2006-11-14 - THRISSUR, India.
The Elephant Lovers' Forum has urged the state government to check alleged traffic of captive elephants. In a statement here yesterday, the forum alleged that there were moves to transport captive elephants from Bihar to Kerala without valid documents, such as no-objection certificates from the Chief Wildlife Warden. "Such moves violate provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972." (Available from Amazon)
2006-11-14 - Durban, South Africa. Elise Tempelhoff, Beeld
Interim legislation was urgently needed to stop elephant calves from being removed from herds for use in the safari and film industry and as working animals. This was the opinion of a working committee, consisting of provincial conservation agencies across the country, as formulated in a document compiled by the KwaZulu-Natal department of agriculture and environmental affairs.
2006-11-14 - Guwahati, India.
Three members of a family, including a four year-old child, were trampled to death and one wounded by wild Asiatic elephants in Assam, wildlife officials said Tuesday. A herd of about 24 elephants went amok after drinking rice beer Monday in Teok Kathoni, a tribal village surrounded by tea gardens, about 370 km from here, a forest official said. The elephants, after entering the village, first guzzled locally made rice beer kept in drums and then went on a rampage killing three people, including...
2006-11-14 - Jalpaiguri, India.
A wild elephant was crushed to death when it came in the way of a moving goods train in West Bengals Jalpaiguri District. Wildlife activists claimed that such incidents keep taking place in the absence of any precaution by the railway staff. Our complaint is that one after another such incidents keep repeating. The railway staff said that they are following orders of the expert committee but there is an immediate need to do something to put a check on it, otherwise these elephants will keep dyin...
2006-11-14 - ELLENSBURG, United States.
Archaeology students and their professor are waiting on lab results to find out more about the mammoth bones they found in the Wenas Valley. They spent the summer digging, and made some interesting discoveries. Doctor Patrick Lubinski says he hopes the bison bone they found turns out to be just as old as the mammoth. They won't know until carbon dating results come back.
2006-11-14 - New Delhi, India. Desmond Boylan
An elephant loaded with tree branches walks down a busy road in New Delhi November 14, 2006. Yahoo! News Photo. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan (INDIA)
2006-11-14 - Sydney, Australia. ABC News online
Rebecca McKeough worked as an elephant keeper at the zoo for most of the 1990s, and has told the ABC's 7.30 Report a black rhino died after running into a steel fence and a female Komodo dragon suffered injuries during repeated violent mating sessions. Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says the Government must investigate the allegations. Taronga's media spokesman Mark Williams says Ms McKeough's information is outdated. He says the zoo fully reviewed the incidents and learned from them, and revised its pr...
2006-11-13 - Dhanbad, India. RESHAM MUKHERJEE
A herd of 13 elephants entered the coal capital a few days ago from Dumka via Jamtara. They travelled across the Barakar near Tundi-Nirsa border of Dhanbad and came into the forest areas of the tribal Tundi block. The forest department is trying to create a “corridor” for elephants in Dumka, Chatra, Hazaribagh and Koderma forest divisions apart from six others in Singhbhum and Kolhan, but they are increasingly straying outside their territories like errant schoolchildren.
2006-11-13 - Sonitpur, India.
Three Asiatic wild elephants have died of electrocution after a high tension wire fell on a herd in Assam, wildlife officials said Monday. A forest warden said an elephant herd Sunday strayed into the Behali tea plantation, about 230 km from here, and tripped over an electric pole. "The high tension wire first electrocuted a full-grown female elephant and immediately two of her calves tried to rescue her and in the process all the three died," Chandan Bora, divisional forest officer, told IANS b...
2006-11-13 - Sydney, Australia.
IN the middle of the sea of smiles that swamped Taronga Zoo's new elephant enclosure is a story to break your heart. The four Thai mahouts, or elephant handlers, who accompanied the zoo's newest stars every step of the way through their arduous two-year journey to Australia, said goodbye to their charges to return home to Thailand, leaving the elephants to their new life. For 36-year-old Sunthon Sonsok, saying goodbye to female elephant Tong Dee was like losing a member of his family.
2006-11-13 - Nyahururu, Kenya. JOHN MBARIA
IT IS LATE AT NIGHT IN Kiandege, four kilometres from Nyahururu town in Kenya's Central Province. Suddenly, women can be heard screaming. Men rush out of their houses armed with various weapons and congregate at a junction about a kilometre from the commotion. I join the men who are on a mission to drive away a herd of elephants that have been terrorising local residents.
2006-11-13 - Sydney, Australia. Mark Bannerman, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Until now, zoo insiders have stayed out of the debate but one former Taronga Zoo employee has decided to speak out about the decision to display and breed elephants, pointing out the zoo doesn't have a great track record when it comes to breeding endangered species. Mark Bannerman reports.
2006-11-13 - Limpopo, South Africa. Press release SanWild
In a daring and courageous elephant capture operation that started on Saturday morning a group of so-called "problem elephants" were captured and relocated to their new home in a wildlife sanctuary in Limpopo Province. Described by many as dangerous, crazy and damage causing, the small family herd of elephants browsed peacefully in their new home this morning unaware of the controversy their rescue had caused with a number of unsympathetic individuals that would rather have preferred to see them...
2006-11-13 - Atlanta, United States. MARK DAVIS
Victoria, Zambezi and Starlet, don't pack those trunks just yet. You're not leaving as originally planned to mate up with some handsome bull. Instead, you'll be treated Tuesday to a pachyderm pile of produce to celebrate two decades' worth of heavyweight entertainment at Zoo Atlanta. Tuesday marks the 20-year anniversary of the day that Victoria and Zoo Atlanta's other African elephants, Zambezi and Starlet, came together.
2006-11-13 - Chicago, United States. RaeLeann Smith, PETA
Three former Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus employees, including two who worked on the animal crew, will speak out for the first time about how Ringling’s elephants live in fear, are cruelly hooked and beaten, and spend the majority of their time in chains. The three whistleblowers will reveal shocking details about their experiences and will offer commentary on PETA’s video footage taken at Ringling this year—which shows that handlers were abusing elephants with bullhooks and c...
2006-11-13 - Sarasota, United States. Jennifer Kay, Associated Press
Back in 1902, a scientist examining the smooth, grapefruit-size brain of a manatee remarked that the organ's unwrinkled surface resembled that of the brain of an idiot. But Hugh, a manatee in a tank at a Florida marine laboratory, doesn't seem like a dimwit. When a buzzer sounds, the speed bump-shaped mammal slowly flips his 1,300 pounds and aims a whiskered snout toward one of eight loudspeakers lowered into the water. Nosing the correct speaker earns him treats.
2006-11-12 - New York, United States. HERBERT LOWE AND SOPHIA CHANG
A Manhattan woman fatally stabbed her husband during a domestic dispute in which she also struck him with a nearly foot-tall ceramic elephant in their apartment bedroom early Saturday, police said. Police sources said Kevin Cobb had been trying to leave the fifth-floor apartment after being stabbed. Police said they found the elephant intact inside the apartment -- and also found a small knife.
2006-11-12 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
I received this very interesting material from Mr. Von Gilsa via Deutsche Post.
Standing room only at Jenda's funeral today and attended by the absolute cream of Sarasota circus society. This followed by an exquisite catered meal at the Club. The bombshell of this afternoon's soiree came when an announcement was made that the Kelly-Miller Circus had been purchased by none other than John Ringling North III, himself.
2006-11-12 - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Mike Cadman
During the capture operation in the 14 000 square kilometre Hwange National Park, game-capture specialists working for Victoria Falls-based tourism operator Shearwater Adventures isolated 12 elephants from family groups, darted the animals and removed them to holding bomas to be trained for use in captivity.
2006-11-12 - Colombo, Sri Lanka. Vindya Amaranayake
The Wildlife Conservation Department has temporarily halted plans to capture and auction two rogue elephants in the Galgamuwa-Maho area, upon protests by the environmental activists, The Nation learns. The department was planning to anaesthetise and capture the two elephants, and auction them on the site on November 9 and 10, and sell them to the highest bidders.
2006-11-12 - Chester, United Kingdom. Pressrelease Chester Zoo
24-year-old Chester Zoo elephant Thi became a mum today - (12 November 2006) – with a little help from the local hospital.The male Asian Elephant calf was born at 4.19 am today inside the zoos new elephant house, Elephants of the Asian Forest. The elephant team was prepared for the new arrival as Thi´s hormone levels had been analysed three times a week by experts at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
2006-11-12 - Colorado Springs, United States. BILL RADFORD
Elephants are remarkably intelligent. Maybe too intelligent. Groups such as the Humane Society of the United States say elephants, with their large brains and sophisticated social groups, suffer from confinement and should not be displayed in zoos. But some say zoo elephants have never had it better. More than half the 78 U.S. zoos that exhibit elephants plan to construct bigger homes, says Kris Vehrs, executive director of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
2006-11-12 - London, United Kingdom. Sandy Auden
Penguin publishers have notified us that: "A life-size woolly mammoth will visit Trafalgar Square, London on Wednesday November 15 2006 to warn us that Britain may soon be set to suffer a peculiar and very savage climate change. "Chris Stringer will be on hand in Trafalgar Square too, bringing with him a hippo's tusk found in Trafalgar Square, a mammoth's tooth and a stone tool used by Neanderthals to butcher Norfolk mammoths 60,000 years ago."
2006-11-12 - Johannesburg, South Africa. Tom Cockrem
It was more than 40,000 years ago that on the continent of Africa two species emerged to vie with each other for the title of ruler of the land: the elephant and man. Drought, disease and war saw these two protagonists experience alternating cycles of dominance. It took the advent of the gun for the two-legged hunter to finally take charge. The African elephant has lost the battle of the species. There are only 600,000 left on the continent today. There used to be at least 15 million.
2006-11-11 - TEMERLOH, Malaysia. LISA GOH
After 33 years of service to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre, it's finally time for Thai elephant Mek Bunga to retire. Mek Bunga, 68, who has gone blind in both eyes since almost two months ago, is in need of a proper shelter to protect her from the environmental elements. Conservation centre volunteer Mohd Razali Mohd Noor said Mek Bunga arrived at the centre in the 1970s from Thailand, and has been serving the centre since.
2006-11-11 - Sarasota, United States. BILL STRONG
The Circus Community has been deeply saddened by the passing of Elephant Trainer Jenda Smaha. The services will be held at The Palms, located at Fruitville Road, and Honore, this Saturday,(Nov. 11), at 11 AM. The information I have is that the reception will follow at Showfolks of Sarasota Clubhouse.
2006-11-11 - Hamilton, Ontario, United States. Jeff Hecht
AFTER a tantalisingly successful run at sequencing parts of the extinct woolly mammoth's genome, the project is now stalled for lack of funds. The team now needs about $500,000 to pay for 100 more runs on the sequencing machine and is applying for grants, Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City says. "We accept cheques in any convertible denomination."
2006-11-11 - SARASOTA, United States. MARK ZALOUDEK
Smaha, who was born Jan Vinicky but adopted his family's stage name as a performer, died in his sleep of heart failure Oct. 27, 2006, while on one of his many photo safaris in Africa. He was 74. Memorial donations to create a watering hole for elephants in a national park in Botswana can be made to the Center for Rehabilitation of Wildlife, P.O. Box 53007, Yellowwood Park, 4011, South Africa, Attn: Dr. Helena Fitchat.
2006-11-11 - Los Angeles, United States. DANA BARTHOLOMEW
Forty years ago, four elephants lumbered trunk to tail from the dilapidated Griffith Park Zoo to their home at the new Los Angeles Zoo. Their milelong trek, taken by 2,200 other animals in every type of truck, ended decades of controversy over cramped quarters at Griffith Park. Now critics say that $40 million earmarked for a 3.6-acre pachyderm exhibit is too much money to be spent on too little space. Zoo officials call plans for the new exhibit above and beyond the industry standard.
2006-11-11 - Singapore, Singapore. xinwei
Two elephants escaped from their quarters at Golden Mile Complex yesterday, causing no distress to Singaporeans as they ambled along the streets. Nonetheless, responding to complaints of public disturbance, authorities quickly disposed of the offending pachyderms. The Kentang speaks to Lieutenant Colonel Perempuan Phua, the Officer tasked with settling the incident.
2006-11-10 - Thrissur, India. Sanu George
A group of veterinarians in India have initiated a unique project that aims at providing free health check-ups to captive elephants through mobile clinics. Conceptualised by a team of veterinarians under the guidance of Jacob V. Cheeran, the project is supported by two Bangalore based NGOs - Asian Nature Conservation Foundation (ANCF) and Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA). The Elephant Welfare Association, Trissur, and the Elephant Study Centre at Kerala Agricultural University are also as...
2006-11-10 - Jaipur, India.
A bull elephant, Ramu, in 'musth' today went berserk after seeing a she elephant Shyama walking ahead on Galta Road, injuring her, damaging roadside tinsheds and halting traffic near Ghat-ki- Balaji temple here until it was tranquilised by zoo officials. A veterinary doctor and forest officials from Jaipur zoo were rushed there and a tranquilizer gun used on Ramu, who then fell asleep in a sandy bed, he said.
2006-11-10 - Sydney, Australia. JANE IGOE
SIGNED, sealed and finally delivered, Taronga Zoo's new Thai elephants have made a triumphant appearance in their new $38 million Asian enclosure. After more than two years of legal wrangling, the five elephants settled effortlessly into their luxurious Mosman abode. The male elephant, Gung, arrived at Taronga about noon on Sunday. Zoo officials said he hopped off the truck and was also out having fun an hour later.
2006-11-10 - Benidorm, Spain. JASON QUINN
This week, the Spanish Media has devoted a lot of space towards Petita, a female Asian elephant in Benidorm's Terra Natura. Petita seems to fall short of the current elephantine standards of beauty. Weighing in at just 2,900 kilos, in a world where the average female elephant weighs 4,000 kilos, Petita is too waif-like for any self-respecting elephant. Her clearly visible jaw line and long thin legs seem only to provoke displeasure among her peers who evidently have no time for 'heroin-chic'.
2006-11-09 - Goreshwar, India.
Afternoon siesta is a luxury that people living in Goreshwar village in Assam cannot indulge in. Elephants emerge from the jungle every year to take advantage of the paddy harvest while others have discovered a taste for local liquor, and drink everything they can lay their trunks on. As their traditional habitats are taken over by man, elephants have been raiding military depots, drinking liquor, terrorising and killing villagers, destroying their farm houses and leaving a trail of destruction ...
2006-11-09 - New York, United States. James Pressley
The day Thomas Edisons men electrocuted an elephant. Edison sent his men to Coney Island in 1903 to use AC to execute Topsy, a rogue elephant that had killed handlers. Bombarded with 6,000 volts, Topsy crashed to the ground, dead in 10 seconds. A new Edison invention, the movie camera, captured the moment for posterity. Both episodes are recorded in crisp detail in "The Money Men" and "AC/DC," lively new accounts of brawls that shaped two keystones of American enterprise: the dollar and electric...
2006-11-09 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Thai mahout practice elephant fighting in Bangkok November 9, 2006. The practice was held in preparation for celebrations for Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadejs 60th anniversary on the throne. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom
2006-11-09 - Sparks, United States.
Trained and presented nightly by Jenda Smaha in the International Follies at the Nugget Casino in Sparks (East Reno) Nevada. Overall Condition: Excellent Bends or Creases: None. Corner Wear: Minor Handwriting/Other markings: E60 is neatly written on the back. $6.50 postpaid to a US address, or $8.00 postpaid to anywhere else.
2006-11-09 - Buffalo, New York, United States. TOM BUCKHAM
Evolving animal care standards have thrown a monkey wrench into the Buffalo Zoos $75 million reconstruction program. The changes mandated by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which set a one-year deadline, caught zoo leaders off guard. President Donna M. Fernandes said she knew the 1912 elephant house and aging veterinary facilities were out of compliance with AZA standards, but expected to be given more time to correct the problems.
2006-11-09 - DHAKA, Bangladesh.
A herd of wild elephants rampaged through a northern Bangladeshi village, damaging crops and homes, and killing one elderly man. The victim died instantly after elephants crushed him. About three dozen people have been killed over the past few years by wild elephants in the district, which is close to the forested border with India. About 250 wild elephants make their homes in Bangladesh's tropical forests, but their habitat has been reduced in recent years due to human development, occasionally...
2006-11-09 - London, United Kingdom. Ham
This rather unusual dancing Ganesh is in the British Museum and dates from 750 AD. It was pillaged brought back from Uttar Pradesh and can now be seen amongst the entirely wonderful Indian collection. You may find it interesting to know that Ganesh, one of the favourite Hindu gods is the lord of beginnings and the placer and remover of obstacles.
2006-11-09 - Theni, India.
The DMK Government in Tamil Nadu is exploring possibilities of holding the annual rejuvenation camp for temple elephants in different places instead of Mudumalai forest area alone, according to HR and CE officials. A team of officials, who visited one of the proposed sites near Manjalaru Dam in the district, said they inspected the facilities available at the big garden of Sri Moongilanai Kamatchi Amman temple, located in a forest area, for conducting the camp for the pachyderms from Madurai, Di...
2006-11-08 - Bonanza, United States.
Cherry's grandfather, William Stamps Cherry, was explorer and the owner of the largest collection of antique African artifacts of its kind in the world and brought back the tusks, weighing 332 pounds together, measuring more than eight feet long and appraised at $835,000, to the U.S. from Africa in the late 1800s. Most of the collection has been in archive at the Los Angeles museum for more than 75 years.
2006-11-08 - London, United States.
Under cover of darkness, a pride of lions launch themselves on a desperate kill. Leaping upon the back of an elephant five times their size, they maul and gnaw until they finally succeed in running their prey into the ground.
2006-11-08 - BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, United States.
An emotional debate is raging over the future of the Birmingham Zoos only remaining elephant. For almost 50 years, Mona the elephant has been the darling of the Birmingham Zoo. At 59, shes the oldest living Asian elephant in North America, and the poster child for a growing national debate over what zoos should do with aging elephants, groups want the Birmingham Zoo to allow Mona to the elephant sanctuary outside Nashville.
2006-11-08 - Philadelphia, United States. Mitchell Gordon
Am I the only one who feels a sense of outrage that Baltimore — the city that showed us how to build stadiums and waterfronts — will now acquire the elephants of America's first zoo, and thereby leave thousands of kids in this region with nothing but a video memory of these stupendous giants?
2006-11-08 - Toledo, United States. JENNI LAIDMAN
COSI Toledo's levy request was too close to call early today, but it appeared the Toledo Zoo elephants are going to get a little breathing room with the projected victory of the zoo's second bid to pass a capital improvement levy. "We're happy with the way it looks thus far,'' said Anne Baker, the zoo's executive director, late last night with a substantial portion of Lucas County votes remaining to be counted. "I'll be happier when 100 percent of the vote is in.''
2006-11-08 - Washington, United States. Office of Human Resources, Smithsonian Institution
The incumbent performs routine duties in the care and maintenance of elephants and other mammals many of whom may be exotic, rare and endangered. The incumbent performs daily schedule of cleaning assigned areas, exhibits, enclosures, glass, acrylic, filters, and adjacent areas; prepares and distributes food in species specific manner; removes unconsumed food and debris; reports deviations from normal food consumption, unusual behavior, symptoms of illness or injury, unsafe or unusual conditions;...
2006-11-07 - Ranchi, India.
With human efforts failing to prevent the depredations caused by rampaging elephants, tribal people in Jharkhand have instead turned to praying to the animals for protection. The various methods adopted by the forest department have failed to protect the people from the tuskers, which regularly venture into villages, kill humans and destroy crops. Tribals in several parts of the state have started worshipping the elephants to appease them, villagers say. Elephant images are made and natu...
2006-11-07 - Amboseli, Kenya.
Torrent added Tue 07 Nov 2006 16:17:20. Category: Movies » Documentary. Size 746.87 MB. Elephant expert Cynthia Moss is your guide to the daily dramas in the lives of grand matriarch Echo and her elephant herd that Moss has studied for more than 20 years in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. Two classic Nature episodes, Echo of the Elephants and Echo of the Elephants: The Next Generation tell this remarkable story that includes mating struggles, difficult births, a baby elephant’s first steps,...
2006-11-07 - JELI, Malaysia. Sharifah Mahsinah Syed Abdullah
The nine-year-old elephant hit by a lorry on the East-West Highway in Batu Melintang has been sent to an the National Elephant Conservation Centre in Kuala Gandah, Pahang. Named Mat Lawar, the pachyderm will receive treatment for the wound on its right leg. It took park rangers, who were assisted by two adult female elephants, two hours to coax Mat Lawar out of the Gunung Basor forest reserve onto a lorry.
2006-11-07 - London, United States. Adrian Searle
Douglas Gordon's eyeless portraits and De Niro doubles haunt his retrospective. But it's one performer's nifty trunk-and-foot-work that steals the show. The animal gets down on his knees and rolls on to his side, trunk extended like a dead man's arm - playing dead. The camera circles. If you follow it, walking between the screens, you begin to get the measure of this circus elephant, doing his party trick. An elephant, then, in a ballet class.
2006-11-06 - Hamburg, Germany.
The First European Elephant Management School is a practical orientated course on different elephant management tactics. Free contact as well as protected contact management technics and procedures will be trained.
2006-11-06 - SUNSARI, Nepal.
The elephant menace that claimed seven lives in five days during the last week of October continued in Sunsari as a wild elephant killed a local woman here Sunday evening. A rogue elephant killed 37-year-old Lila Devi Pandey in Itahari, Sunsari yesterday evening while she was returning from the jungle near Tal Talaiya carrying firewood. Pandey is the eighth victim of the rogue elephants in the eastern Terai region in the last two weeks.
2006-11-06 - Auckland, New Zealand. Press Release: Auckland Zoo
Auckland Zoo is putting on one of its biggest ever birthday parties for two very special girls, elephants Burma and Kashin, and all zoo visitors are invited. Animal Planet Elephants Birthday will celebrate Burma and Kashins combined birthdays, and to mark the occasion the elephants will be painted up in traditional Thai style, but its also an opportunity to highlight to our visitors the issues facing elephants in the wild, and how we can help.
2006-11-06 - Gland, Switzerland.
Contact Information: IUCN - The World Conservation Union, Council Affairs Unit, Mrs. Fiona Hanson, Fax: 0041 22 999 0020
2006-11-06 - MELBOURNE, Australia.
MELBOURNE'S three new elephants Dokkoon, Kulab and Num-Oi have finally arrived after two years, a legal wrangle, protests, two quarantine camps and a lot of flying. A Russian Ilyushin cargo plane delivered at Avalon airport. The three females were placed on tray trucks and driven to Melbourne Zoo, and were last night settling in to the Trail of the Elephants enclosure.
2006-11-06 - Denpassar, Indonesia.
An Australian woman is recovering in Royal Darwin Hospital after being gored by an elephant in Bali. Western Australian woman Robyn Paki says she is lucky to be alive after she was picked up by an elephant she had been riding on and flung into the air last Thursday. Her two children saw the attack. Mrs Paki was resuscitated by a family friend after she stopped breathing.
2006-11-06 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States.
Just for Elephants, a children’s book by Carol Buckley detailing the everyday life of elephants on a 2,700 acre sanctuary in Tennessee, is scheduled to be released by Tilbury House on November 15. On the heels of her award-winning book Travels with Tarra, which detailed the raising of and traveling with an elephant, Buckley has written a book that describes what everyday life is like for the many elephants that live at The Elephant Sanctuary located near the small town of Hohenwald, Tennessee.
2006-11-06 - Vallejo, United States. Dale Arnold
In this photo submitted by Six Flags Marine World, Tava, an African elephant, and Sister, a miniature donkey, remind all parties to go vote on Election Day as they demonstrate their way of stuffing the ballot box on Monday, Nov. 6, 2006, at Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, California. (AP Photo/Six Flags Marine World, Dale Arnold)
2006-11-05 - Washington, United States. KRISTIN L. VEHRS, executive director of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (left in photo)
There is no place on the planet where elephants are not in contact with humans. On increasingly shrinking territory, elephants in Africa and Asia face poaching, predation, hunger and disease - their wild state. If we abandon elephants to their fate, in a few short years the only place you'll be able to see them is in a museum. But this is where high-quality, accredited zoos come in, offering a vital link to elephant conservation.
2006-11-05 - Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam. Ignatius Stephen
Thirty-six-year-old Saba Douglas-Hamilton, BBC's famous Holiday Programme presenter and daughter to elephant expert Iain Douglas-Hamilton, is said to have had a "whale" of a time while in the Sultanate although she did not find any elephants here. Saba Douglas-Hamilton was introduced to her first elephant when she was six weeks old, and thinks of elephants as part of the extended family. She is to feature Brunei in BBC's longest running travel holiday programme which is expected to give a big bo...
2006-11-05 - PHILADELPHIA, United States. ROBERT STRAUSS
Over the ensuing 132 years, elephants have been a big part of the zoo’s attraction. Instead of expanding the space for the exhibit, the zoo’s board of directors has decided to put the money elsewhere. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, there is a slim hope that elephants will eventually return to the zoo, since the board said it could not come up with proper financing at this point.
2006-11-05 - RAPID CITY, United States.
The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center will have a wild feel to it on Saturday, Nov. 4. Thats because magician Jay Owenhouse plans to bring not only his 8,500-pound elephant Tai onto the stage, but his Bengal tiger Shere Khan as well. Owenhouse´s tour, "Magic on the Edge," incorporates his wild kingdom, but also includes audience members. Owenhouse promises to float audience members, be sawed in half and predict the future.
2006-11-05 - Sydney, Australia.
Four more elephants have arrived in Australia today, bound for local zoos after a controversial journey from Thailand. The elephants touched down this morning in Sydney, where one will be transferred to the city's Taronga Zoo, before their chartered Russian plane heads to Avalon Airport near Melbourne, to drop off another three this afternoon for Melbourne Zoo.
2006-11-05 - San Rafael, California, United States. ELLIOT M. KATZ, veterinarian and president and founder of In Defense of Animals (left in photo)
News that elephants recognize themselves in a mirror and are thus self-aware was trumpeted worldwide this week. Yet every day elephants needlessly suffer in too-small zoo enclosures.
2006-11-05 - Shimba Hills, Kenya. Tia Goldenberg
The field behind John Saidi Bodwe's house in the lush green hills near Shimba Hills National Reserve once yielded maize, cassava and bananas, but is now a sickly pale brown on which nothing grows. The attackers are marauding elephants that constantly invade surrounding farms and have become unstoppable. In a bid to address these grievances, a massive 3 million dollar operation is underway to move 400 elephants from Shimba Hills to nearby Tsavo Park.
2006-11-04 - SILIGURI, India.
A group of 17 elephants walked into the Atal Tea Estate plantation on the outskirts of Siliguri last night without signs of moving out. Although the elephants have not caused any damage so far, their presence has robbed the locals of their sleep. On 23 October, a group of 13 elephants had ambled into the same plantation causing serious concern among the workers. Forest department officials, after a lot of effort, managed to drive away the pachyderms to the nearby forests on that occasion.
2006-11-04 - Sydney, Australia.
THE arrival of four Asian elephants from Thailand has not been a walk in the park, but the animals took to the stage like pros in their first public appearance at Taronga Zoo yesterday. The new enclosure, part of a $25 million project to bring the elephants from Thailand, consists of several paddocks, an elephant barn and two wading pools, one with its own waterfall.
2006-11-04 - Gainesville, United States. Isaza R, Davis RD, Moore SM, Briggs DJ. College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida
Objective-To evaluate the humoral immune response of Asian elephants to a primary IM vaccination with either 1 or 2 doses of a commercially available inactivated rabies virus vaccine and evaluate the anamnestic response to a 1-dose booster vaccination. Animals-16 captive Asian elephants. A 2-dose series of rabies virus vaccine should provide an adequate antibody response in elephants, and annual boosters should maintain the antibody response in this species.
2006-11-04 - Memphis, United States. Allison Martin
Elephants are some of the most beloved animals at the zoo, but some worry the massive animals don't have enough room to roam. The Memphis Zoo is one of at least 40 zoos across the country expanding the space it gives its elephants. The elephants live in a recently expanded space and play in a new, 80,000 gallon pool. It's part of a national trend toward elephant conservation, amidst some concerns the animals may be better served roaming free.
2006-11-04 - Calcutta, India. JAYANTA BASU
Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said railway officials and the forest department will meet to discuss ways to minimise accidents involving elephants on railway tracks in north Bengal. the accidents took place because gauge conversion had led to an increase in the speed limit of trains.
2006-11-04 - Kapama, South Africa.
In South Africa, a unique team of elephants is being trained to track down their most deadly enemy - the poacher. Watch as elephant expert Saba Douglas-Hamilton puts the specially-trained elephants through their first real test and joins former big game poacher Magic, now a conservation officer, in an attempt to elude scent-tracking elephants.
2006-11-03 - Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
A horse ride in the Addo Elephant Park became a nightmare for Australian tourist Margaret Davies, 48, after she fell off a horse in the Nyati wilderness area 10:00 on Thursday and had to be airlifted to Greenacres Hospital with back injuries and a fractured femur. The trumpeting of the elephants apparently frightened the horses, which bolted and threw three people, one of them Mrs Davies.
2006-11-03 - Sydney, Australia. Mark Baker
Two of the four new arrivals at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, Asian elephants enjoy a swim in their pool as their keepers look on during their first public appearance at the zoo Friday, Nov. 3, 2006. The Elephants from Thailand are part of the first-ever Cooperative Conservation Program designed to help arrest the rapid decline of wild Asian elephant across their 13 range states in Asia from India to Vietnam. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
2006-11-03 - Knoxville, Tennessee, United States.
Four murder charges were formally dropped in Knoxville against an accused serial killer known as the "Zoo Man." Thomas Dee Huskey is a former elephant trainer who got his nickname from prostitutes who said he took them to the Knoxville Zoo to have sex. He remains in jail serving a 66-year prison term for raping four other women in woods near the Knoxville Zoo in 1992.
2006-11-03 - DHARMAPURI, India.
An elephant was found dead near Thakkatty tribal village in Anchetty forests in Krishnagiri district. The sex and cause of death of the pachyderm is yet to be ascertained. Whether the elephant was killed by poachers or it died a natural death remained a mystery, said Forest officials. A post-mortem would be conducted on the spot on Thursday, they added.
2006-11-03 - JAKARTA, Indonesia.
Twenty-one wild elephants on Indonesia's Riau islands have died in the first 10 months of this year, raising further concerns of rapid declines of the animal, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) conservation group has warned. Of the total, 15 died of poisoning and gunshot wounds resulting from "conflicts with humans in residential areas," said Dudi Rufendi, program manager for WWF in Riau.
2006-11-03 - Asmara, Eritrea. Shoshani J, Walter RC, Abraha M, Berhe S, University of Asmara
We report on a late Oligocene proboscidean species from Eritrea, dated to 26.8 +/- 1.5 Mya. This "missing link" between early elephantiformes and Elephantimorpha is the oldest known nongomphothere proboscidean to probably display horizontal tooth displacement, typical of elephants. Together with the newly discovered late Oligocene gomphotheres from Chilga, Ethiopia, the Eritrean taxon points to the importance of East Africa as a major area for the knowledge of the early evolution of Elephantimor...
2006-11-03 - MADURAI, India.
Sumathi, a 39-year-old elephant of Dhandayuthapaniswamy Temple, died at Palani on Wednesday night. The pachyderm, which was ailing due to a bacterial attack since October 31, had lost movement of both its hind legs and was treated by a team of veterinary doctors drawn from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The end came around 10.20 p.m.
2006-11-03 - PORTLAND, Oregon, United States.
A Portland-area foster mother yesterday became the Oregon Zoo's 40 millionth visitor since the 1962 birth of Packy, the zoo's famous elephant. They boarded the "Zoomer" shuttle vehicle and were chauffeured to the elephant barn for a behind-the-scenes tour and face-to-trunk meeting with Packy. Packy, the oldest and largest Asian elephant in the United States, stands 10 feet, 4 inches tall at the shoulder and weighs about 14,020 pounds. He is the only second-generation captive bull to breed succes...
2006-11-02 - Sydney, Australia. Jano Gibson
Four female Asian elephants flown in from the Cocos Islands today will go on public display at Taronga Zoo tomorrow morning. The four - Pak Boon, Tang Mo, Tong Dee and matriarch Porn Thip - arrived at the zoo this afternoon after a 14-hour flight aboard a giant Russian Illyushin. They arrived at their new harbourside multi-million dollar enclosure after a speedy, police-escorted trip across the city, through the Harbour Tunnel.
2006-11-02 - Sydney, Australia.
The RSPCA says it is disappointed that the first of a group of Thai elephants have arrived in Australia destined for zoos in Sydney and Melbourne. Animal welfare groups took legal action to stop them being imported and delayed their arrival for 18 months. The RSPCA's Jane Speechley says the groups are not taking any further action, but are calling on the public to look for signs of stress when they are visiting the elephants in the zoos.
2006-11-02 - Thrissur, India.
The elephants of Guruvayur Sree Krishna temple, employed specifically to serve the Lord, will be for the first time in history, rented out to pose as showpieces in a lavish marriage ceremony to be held in Tamil Nadu on January 7. Guruvayur Padmanabhan, considered to be the state’s most majestic tusker and employed exclusively to carry the ‘thidambu’ of the Lord, is among the five elephants offered on rent.
2006-11-02 - CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh.
A herd of wild elephants rampaged through a remote, hillside village in southeastern Bangladesh, killing one boy, villagers said Thursday. Last month, a herd of wild elephants killed five members of a family in the same district. Delwar Hossain said the villagers tried to scare the elephants away by beating drums and using firecrackers and then left the area, which borders Myanmar. A 10-year-old boy who lingered behind, however, was crushed to death by the elephants, Hossain said.
2006-11-02 - Munich, Germany. PR Munich Zoo
On the 28.10.06 the young elephant cow "Temi" arrived in Hellabrunn with a special transporter. She was placed here by the zoo Berlin Friedrichsfelde. She was accompanied by her animal keeper, Mr Thomas Günther, who will stay with us until Sunday in order to help "Temi" (Burmese "daughter") settle in. Before that two of our elephant keepers went to Berlin for 14 days to get to know the animal.
2006-11-02 - Dubbo, Australia. LYNTON GRACE, Milton - Ulladulla news and Dubbo Daily Liberal
The discovery that elephants can recognise their own reflection comes as no surprised to Western Plains Zoo's (WPZ) keeper Linda Gardiner. Ms Gardiner said WPZ's elephants - 'Yum Yum', ‘Cherry' and ‘Cuddles' - had performed similar tasks. "Often they will pick up their hay and eat it beside the water," she said. "They are likely to encounter their own reflection in water quite often." Working with elephants revealed another level of their perception every day, she said.
2006-11-01 - Sydney, Australia.
Eight Asian elephants destined for zoos in Sydney and Melbourne are expected to arrive in Australia on Thursday. They passed crucial quarantine checks on October 31. News Ltd said the elephants would arrive in Sydney early on Thursday evening. But Taronga Zoo spokesman Mark Williams could not confirm their arrival. "It will be sooner rather than later but their arrival relies on us chartering a big Russian freight plane and until we have that confirmed we can't say when they will be here," Mr Wi...
2006-11-01 - Devon, United Kingdom.
Local people have been giving keepers their unwanted pumpkins, which can be used as feed as well as playthings. The zoo's Phil Knowling said: "We will even take them with scary faces cut into them." The zoo is well-known for its environmental enrichment work which helps occupy animals such as primates, elephants and big cats.
2006-11-01 - Windhoek, Namibia. Absalom Shigwedha
ABOUT 22 000 head of livestock have been vaccinated against anthrax in the Caprivi Region in the last week. Dr Chitate said 20 zebras, 10 elephants and two buffaloes had died of suspected anthrax in areas bordering Botswana's Chobe National Park. Only two of the elephants were confirmed to have died of anthrax, he said. Government has imported 180 000 doses of anthrax vaccine from South Africa at a cost of N$108 000 for the vaccination campaign, which started last week Tuesday.
2006-11-01 - Negev, Israel. Zohar Blumenkrantz
Kibbutz Nahal Oz and the Tourism Ministry are planning a NIS 6 million elephant park in the agricultural areas near the kibbutz. Between 20 to 30 female Asian elephants will roam the park freely. Females are considered more friendly to people than males. Visitors will also be able to ride the elephants. Details of the wildlife park, which hopes to open in 2008 to 400,000 annual visitors were revealed for the first time yesterday during a tour of the southern region by Tourism Ministry director g...
2006-11-01 - Itahari, Nepal.
A team of experts is arriving in Sunsari on Wednesday to tame a wild elephant, which has killed eight persons in Sunsari and Morang districts so far, at the direction of National Park Department. The experts will look for the elephant that is terrorising villagers and find out the cause of its behaviour. The law allows shooting down of the elephant if it goes mad, Sharma said.
2006-11-01 - Crosbyton, Texas, United States. GERALD E. MCLEOD
Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton is a "must see" for anyone even mildly interested in dinosaurs. Also in the museum is the complete skeleton of a mastodon sticking its head through the acoustic tiles in the ceiling of a former furniture store. So is the skull of a rare four-tusked mastodon found in a gravel pit near La Grange. The giant tusk on a polished wood stand is one of Taylor's creations.
2006-11-01 - WASHINGTON, United States. Liz Szabo
Some say zoo elephants have never had it better. Anna and Dolly of the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore will enjoy a new outdoor walking track and three additional companions. At the National Zoo, Kandula, Shanthi and Ambika will have four times as much room as in their current exhibit. More than half of the 78 zoos that exhibit elephants plan to construct bigger homes, says Kris Vehrs, executive director of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
2006-11-01 - Thula Thula, South Africa. Roy Watts
After watching a savage Carte Blanche documentary on the brutal taming of the Tuli elephants, Lawrence Anthony made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire some of these unfortunate animals, but they had already been placed in various game reserves. The Elephant Manager and Owners association learned of his need and came to light with a herd of seven jumbos from Mpumalanga, and they were darted, loaded on trucks, sedated and sent on a nine hour road trip.
2006-10-31 - PEKANBARU, Indonesia.
Indonesia Wild rampaging elephants trampled a farmer to death and destroyed several houses in a village on Indonesia's Sumatra island, witnesses said Tuesday. The people of Lubuk Embut, a village on Riau province 900 kilometers (600 miles) northwest of the capital Jakarta, have been terrorized over the last few days by a herd of around 20 starving elephants in search of food, said Jayok, a village chief who goes by a single name.
2006-10-31 - Washington, United States.
Parts of a fossil jawbone discovered by a farmer in Eritrea might belong to a "missing link" species that connects modern elephants to their ancient ancestors. The lower jaw fragments, about 27 million years old, were found in the Dogali fossil site, said Jeheskel Shoshani, the lead author of elephant evolution and professor of biology at the University of Asmara in Eritrea. The new species is named Eritreum melakeghebrekristosi, by the researchers, according to a paper that appears in the onli...
2006-10-30 - ATLANTA, United States.
Elephants have joined a small, elite group of species, including humans, great apes and dolphins, that have the ability to recognize themselves in the mirror, according to a new finding by researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York.
2006-10-30 - Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
At least 12 wild elephants ran amuck in two villages in Trumon Timur sub-district in Aceh Selatan district recently, an official said. The wild elephants trampled down paddies and plantations, and also damaged clean water pipes in Naca village, Trumon Timur sub-district chief Said Azhar said in Trumon on Monday.
2006-10-30 - Baraboo, United States. Scott De Laruelle
The man who brought some of the first animals acts to Circus World Museum passed away Friday while on safari in Africa, studying the elephants he loved so much. Jenda Smaha, 74, was brought to Baraboo in 1960 by Chappie Fox and Wilbur Deppe and worked here for several years before embarking on a career that would take him around the world, said his brother Tony Smaha.
2006-10-30 - Atlanta, United States. Plotnik JM, de Waal FB, Reiss D., Emory University
We exposed three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to a large mirror to investigate their responses. Here, we report a successful MSR elephant study and report striking parallels in the progression of responses to mirrors among apes, dolphins, and elephants. These parallels suggest convergent cognitive evolution most likely related to complex sociality and cooperation.
2006-10-30 - SPRINGFIELD, Missouri, United States. MARCUS KABEL
Riverbluff Cave is slowly yielding its fossil treasures:Lead paleontologist Matt Forir said every discovery raises new questions. Mammoth bones and a juvenile tooth dated around 630,000 years ago came from one of two species and it will require more adult remains to tell which one it is. "We either have the oldest wooly mammoth in North America or the youngest Meridian mammoth.
2006-10-29 - BALTIMORE, United States. Julie Stoiber
As the Philadelphia and Maryland Zoos' plans to merge their African elephant collections in Baltimore coalesce, the Maryland Zoo elephant manager will take a messy but important step in building bonds before the big move, which is scheduled for the spring. He will collect dung and urine from Dolly and Anna in Maryland and, with permission, deliver it to Philadelphia, giving Petal, Bette and Kallie the opportunity to "get used to smelling our girls," and paving the way for an acclimation in which...
2006-10-29 - Bridgeport, United States. KEN DIXON and AARON LEO
Animal rights activists won a small victory this weekend when a federal judge ruled city police had to allow them closer to the Arena at Harbor Yard. In particular, the rights activists were underscoring the plight of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephants, highly social animals that are chained up for most of the day before they perform.
2006-10-29 - PHILADELPHIA, United States. PETER JACKSON
One panelist asked the candidates whether they thought the state should step in to help the zoo in Pennsylvania's largest city complete an expansion of its elephant exhibit, which was canceled because of rising costs and fundraising problems. Swann said "he would work to find a way to "get some elephants back in there", Rendell stopped short of promising help for the elephants in his home city's zoo
2006-10-29 - Okavango, Botswana. Bob Harris
Bob Harris of Clairemont was in the Okavango Delta in Botswana when this young male elephant charged his safari vehicle. “Our guide spoke softly and calmly to him and he quieted down, thank goodness,” Harris recounted. “The entire trip was a wonderful experience.”
2006-10-29 - London, United Kingdom. Hutchinson JR, Schwerda D, Dale RH, Fischer MS, Kram R., The Royal Veterinary College
We analyzed the locomotor kinematics of over 2400 strides from 14 African and 48 Asian elephant individuals (body mass 116-4632 kg) freely moving over ground at a 17-fold range of speeds, from slow walking at 0.40 m s(-1) to the fastest reliably recorded speed for elephants, 6.8 m s(-1). These data reveal that African and Asian elephants have some subtle differences in how size-independent kinematic parameters change with speed.
2006-10-28 - Dak Lak, Vietnam.
A rampaging herd of rare wild elephants is terrorizing two villages in central Vietnam, destroying crops and ignoring villagers' efforts to ward them off, local media reported Friday. No one has been hurt but the elephants have trampled and destroyed 50 hectares of cashew, rice and corn in the villages. It was the second incidence of crop-destroying elephants in Vietnam this year.
2006-10-28 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. thailandrox.
ok so moving along, we go down to the elephants. we get on the back of a tempermental bitch. our elephant didnt listen to shit the trainer was saying lol. i guess when your five tons you do whatever the hell you want. so our elephant would go the wrong direction, stop and eat some grass.
2006-10-28 - Mumbai, India. Aditya Ghosh
"Learning to live with elephants" is now the mantra of the Maharashtra forest department and in that, they are now been told by the Centre to prepare the areas in Kolhapur for elephant habitation. With funds under Project Elephants promised for the state, the forest department is trying desperately to reduce man-animal conflict and make the area a safe home for the pachyderms.
2006-10-28 - Hanover, Germany.
One-year old elephant "Tarak" (2nd R) enjoys his first birthday cake made of rice and cereals with his mother Khaing Hnin Hnin and his aunts Dunja and Manari 28 October 2006 at the zoo in Hanover. (Photo by Jochen Luebke/AFP/Getty Images)
2006-10-28 - Baraboo, United States.
Make a donation to the circus museum in Baraboo and you can drive away with a trunk full of elephant manure. Weekday mornings from Monday to Nov. 17 the museum will let anyone who makes a donation haul away the dung, which according to the release is a "bonanza" for home gardeners. The museum will have a skid loader on hand for gardeners who want to take away a truckload.
2006-10-27 - New Delhi, India. Zafri Mudasser Nofil
A doorbell can be an effective tool to check marauding elephants from entering into human territory, according to a wildlife expert who has successfully implemented the method in Assam. "Every time an elephant trips on the fence while trying to cross, the bell rings. This gives the people enough time to thwart the animal," Goswami told IANS. "The technique involves a cell, switch and a bell connected to a high fence built with nylon strings," said Shimanta Goswami, a member of the Emergency Reli...
2006-10-27 - SERONGA, Botswana.
The President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Valli Moosa, says something needs to be done to reduce the Botswana elephant population. Botswana is still debating a workable elephant management plan while ecologists say the country is overstocked with the animals which cause �a serious ecological concern that needs to be addressed.�
2006-10-27 - Ontario, Canada. Jennifer Viegas
Battle scars on male mastodon tusks reveal they fought in brutal combat each year during seasonal phases of heightened sexual activity and aggression. The discovery, announced at a recent Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Ontario, counters the view that now-extinct mastodons were peaceful, passive creatures that rarely engaged in battles. It also strengthens the link between mastodon and modern elephant behaviour, since male bull elephants also fight seasonal, hormonally-charged batt...
2006-10-27 - London, United Kingdom. Elli Leadbeater
Rifle-toting tourists hunting exotic animals could actually help protect Africa's vulnerable species, a leading conservationist has suggested. Elephant populations had benefited from a permit system that allowed sport hunters to kill a limited number of the beasts, according to Eugene Lapointe.
2006-10-27 - Philadelphia, United States. PATRICIA TALORICO
There are lions and tigers and bears. But, very soon, no elephants. Now -- and for just a few months more, is your last chance to catch the elephants in Philly. The cash-strapped zoo, the first in the country, could not afford to expand the 1,800-square-foot, 1940s era barn and quarter-acre yard where the pachyderms now live.
2006-10-27 - MIAMI, United States. JESSICA GRESKO
Now on display is a 5,000 square foot exhibit on excrement titled "The Scoop on Poop," an educational exhibit filled with photos of animals and faeces. Elephant keepers were charged with weighing the amount of elephant poop one of the zoo's Asian male elephants, Dahlip, produces in a 24-hour period. The turd total: 540 pounds.
2006-10-27 - St. Louis, United States. BRANDI SPELBRING
Students presented a basket of goodies to the zoo's newborn elephant, Meliha. The basket included bottles of ketchup, bottles of bubbles, jello boxes, and baby rattles; items requested by the zoo to stimulate the baby with different tastes and experiences. These gifts will help the staff recreate situations and behaviors in the wild for Meliha as she grows.
2006-10-27 - Lincoln, Illinois, United States.
Scholars thought the tusk was about 22,000 years old, but a laboratory in New Zealand, using accelerator mass spectrometry dating, has determined that the Sugar Creek mammoth apparently died about 11,600 years ago.. Illinois State Museum curator of geology Jeffrey Saunders, an expert on the Ice Age elephants, calls that "a surprisingly late date." It also is relatively close to when North American mammoths became extinct about 11,000 years ago.
2006-10-27 - Terai, Nepal.
As the autumnal harvest of maize and rice ripens in the fertile plains of the Terai, human-elephant conflict increases. On 22 October, a wild elephant killed five and injured five others in eastern Nepal. Migratory herds of elephants often raid crops resulting in widespread damage and even loss of life.
2006-10-26 - Berlin, Germany.
The elephants at the Berlin Zoo celebrated Halloween Tuesday with a special treat: wheelbarrows full of pumpkins. Some of the elephants like to roll the pumpkins before breaking them with their feet, but all of them ate the gourds. The pumpkins are a perfect treat for the animals. They are rich in fiber but have a high sugar content.
2006-10-26 - Itahari, Nepal. Somnath Banstola
With the death of a person due to an attack of a wild elephant in Sunsari this morning, the death toll from attacks of wild elephants in Sunsari and Morang in eastern Nepal has reached seven in five days. Rahim Miyan, 50, a resident of Pakali VDC-2, Sunsari, was trampled to death by a wild elephant this morning. Miyan had come out of the house in the morning to urinate when the wild elephant attacked him, according to the in-charge of the Area Police Office Pakali, Prem Subba.
2006-10-26 - TUALATIN, United States. Jennifer Clampet
Grasping the molars with his fingers, Dr. John George rolled a set of 11,300-year-old mastodon teeth in his hands. George and Portland State University classmate Ron Sund excavated the mastodon from a Tualatin field in 1962. George, who now lives in Raleigh Hills, is loaning the tusk and teeth for permanent display to the Tualatin Heritage Center.
2006-10-26 - Bridgeport, United States. AARON LEO
The circus' opening night Wednesday at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport wowed spectators and drew animal rights protesters, leading to another first: nine activists were arrested after trying to get past police-placed barriers blocking the entrance. Those arrested were issued court summonses charging them with criminal trespass, breach of the peace, interfering with police and inciting to riot, said Derek V. Oatis, a lawyer from Glastonbury, who was himself charged.
2006-10-26 - Lincoln, Illinois, United States. ANN KLOSE
A 22,000 year-old woolly mammoth tusk is eased very gently into the McKinstry Library on the Lincoln College campus Wednesday afternoon. The prehistoric artifact is now much drier and more intact than when student Judd McCullum found it in two parts in Sugar Creek a little more than a year ago. It's the largest mammoth tusk found in Illinois.
2006-10-26 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“The framed image of Embun@Siput is placed at the reception at Legend Hotel Hotel by Awareness and Preservation of Elephants (APES) spokesman Chwen Zeng and Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary assistant wildlife officer Mohammad Rizal Paimin to create awareness and let people know about the project. It is a high traffic area so tourists can see it while checking in and this will help spark interest in the project,” said Chwen.
2006-10-26 - Miami, United States.
Ron Magill, communications director for the Miami Metro Zoo, holds elephant dungn 12 October 2006 during a press preview for "The Scoop on Poop" travelling exhibition which is on a book by Canadian author and photographer Wayne Lynch about the way animals and humans use fecal matter.(AFP/File/Robert Sullivan)
2006-10-26 - Darjeeling, India.
A herd of 15 wild elephants has been destroying crops in tea estates across Darjeeling.The elephants, which inhabit the forests nearby, often come out of the thick vegetation into fields and tea estates in Darjeeling. Pushed back into the ever-smaller pockets of jungle and with limited access to their traditional habitats, elephants have been coming into daily conflict with plantation workers.
2006-10-25 - Colombo, Sri Lanka. Manshark
I was watching a tv prog today about Sri Lankan Elephants. And what did I learn from it? I really don’t know for it left me asking more questions at the end than I had at the beginning. At the end of the day, which ones are the best? Those born in shelter who knows not the ways of the world? OR Those born in the wild who knows not common decency and self-respect?
2006-10-25 - BRIDGEPORT, United States. CHARLES WALSH
This year, the emphasis of the demonstrations will shift from past accusations of ill treatment and occasional abuse of circus elephants to the broader issue of how circuses are "robbing" elephants, tigers and other animals of their "freedom and dignity," said Pricilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals. "P.T. Barnum is remembered for saying 'a sucker is born every minute,' " Feral said. "By using nonhuman performers, circuses really do suck the free spirit out of these animals."
2006-10-25 - Tualatin, United States.
A mastodon tusk and two molars excavated in 1962 in Tualatin will go on exhibit at the Tualatin Historical Society's Heritage Center. The items were kept by the retired Portland dentist who dug them up. Now, for the first time, they will be displayed in the city where they were discovered. Dr. John George, who excavated the bones from a swampy swale where Fred Meyer now sits, says the items will be making a rightful return.
2006-10-24 - WASHINGTON, United States. Jim Rogers, Jerry Redding
The U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is extending the public comment period regarding the In Defense of Animals petition on elephants and request for comment to Dec. 11. Specifically, APHIS invites responses to the following questions: What are the causes of arthritis in elephants? What, if any, foot care practices have been used on captive elephants to maintain healthy feet?
2006-10-24 - Nairobi, Kenya.
Three people were trampled to death by elephants in different incidents in Kwale and Laikipia districts at the weekend. Villagers claimed the elephants is among those that the Kenya Wildlife Service was moving from Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary. In Laikipia, Thuo Kariuki, who was driving away a herd of about 20 elephants which had invaded their village, was attacked and killed.
2006-10-24 - SEOUL, South Korea.
Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said on Tuesday he spent part of private donations for research to pay the Russian mafia for mammoth tissues to clone extinct elephant species. Hwang, once celebrated as a national hero, was indicted in May on charges of fraud and embezzlement after prosecutors said he was the mastermind of a scheme to make it look like his team had produced stem cells through cloning human embryos.
2006-10-24 - Mumbai, India. Aditya Ghosh
While the Government of Maharashtra has been allowed to add elephants in its variety of wildlife 'officially' after a century of no records of the animal in the state, the forest officials are busy inviting experts from different states to teach them and the villagers how to tackle these creatures.
2006-10-24 - Windhoek, Namibia.
ABOUT 32 wild animals have died of anthrax in the Caprivi Region since the end of last month. Of the 20 Namibian elephants, two died in Mudumu National Park. 20 zebras, 10 elephants and two buffaloes had died of the disease in areas such as Masikili - which borders Botswana's Chobe National Park, where the disease is believed to have originated. According to conservation officials in Botswana, about 170 wild animals had died of anthrax in Chobe National Park since last month.
2006-10-24 - Houston, United States.
The Houston Zoo is counting on your vote to help name the newest member of its elephant family. Zookeepers have provided 5 potential names for the 384-pound pachyderm — just vote on this page. And, when you vote, make sure you fill out the form so you'll be eligible to win a great prize from the zoo: a Pachyderm Prize Pack which includes a one-year Houston Zoo Family Membership, a Keeper of the Animals Adopt Kit for Thai (the baby’s proud father) and a private behind-the-scenes tour of the z...
2006-10-24 - ST. LOUIS, United States.
The baby elephant at the St. Louis Zoo is finally gaining weight. Zoo officials say Maliha, the Asian elephant born Aug. 2, now weighs 343 pounds. That's only two pounds more than she weighed at birth, but the zoo had been concerned because the elephant had been losing weight. Zoo officials say Maliha has steadily put on weight since her mother, Ellie, started to take a hormone to stimulate milk production.
2006-10-24 - Indianapolis, United States.
A one-year birthday bash for a member of the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday. Baby elephant Kedar turned one year old today. The pachyderm celebrated with a fruit medley of watermelon, strawberries, pears, and apples. The Zoo tells us Kedar is growing fast. Kedar isn't the youngest elephant at the zoo. That title belongs to Zehara born just a couple months ago.
2006-10-24 - Siliguri, India.
A herd of over 100 elephants went on a rampage in the Terai and Dooars region of North Bengal killing a girl and injuring two others, officials said here today. The elephants also partly demolished a heritage temple and destroyed standing crops, they said. A 19 year girl was trampled to death by a wild elephant while she was returning home from a Kali puja pandal on Saturday. Her friend who was accompanying her was also attacked by the elephant. She has been admitted to the North Bengal Medical ...
2006-10-24 - Providence, United States. Joe Robillard
Roger Williams Zoo, the country’s third oldest zoo, is looking to gather a total of $35 million to complete its renovations. Plans for the $35 million include upgrading the polar bear and elephant exhibits, and the creation of an interactive New England Trail and children’s zoo. The Rhode Island Zoological Society (RIZS), which is a nonprofit organization which runs the zoo, is heading the effort to raise the money.
2006-10-24 - Luanda, Angola. CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON
Despite a shrinking population of elephants, Angolas share of the trade in ivory tusks has doubled in the past year, according to a report by wildlife organisations TRAFFIC and WWF International, who surveyed the volume of elephant ivory available in curio markets in Luanda. Angola was also reported to be the country of origin in 53 major seizures of ivory in some 12 countries between 1990 and 2003.
2006-10-24 - Beaverton, Oregon, United States.
Friends, family, and colleagues of L.E.L. "Bets" Rasmussen, Ph.D. a long-time OGI professor best known for her research on mammalian chemocommunication, will gather for a memorial service in her honor on Saturday, October 28, in OGI's Wilson Clark Center dining hall, from 12 - 2:00 p.m. Dr. Rasmussen died in at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle on Sunday, September 17, at the age of 67.
2006-10-24 - London, United Kingdom.
A leading London gentleman's barber was fined £10,000 after 24 grooming accessories made from ivory were found on its premises during a raid by police. Officers from the Metropolitan's Wildlife Crime Unit seized 24 items including shaving brushes - stamped with "real ivory" - on sale for up to £1,100 each, as well as ivory hairbrushes, glove stretchers and an elephant's tusk when they raided the company's shops in Mayfair and Piccadilly.
2006-10-23 - GERIK, Malaysia. Hah Foong Lian
Motorists along the East-West Highway must not honk or switch on the car headlights when they come across elephants on the road. Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department director Shabrina Mohd Shariff said the advice was among other tips put up on a signboard to inform motorists on what to do in such a situation. "By honking, the elephants will get agitated and may attack the motorists," she said on Monday.
2006-10-23 - Sunsari, Nepal.
At least three persons were killed and three others were severely injured when a wild elephant went on a rampage in two places in Sunsari district within the last 12 hours. The elephant crushed a man to death in Panchakanya village Sunday night and killed two women in Dharan Municipality-15 this morning, reports said. Three villagers were injured in the elephant’s attack.
2006-10-22 - Kansas, United States.
"He was in here every night after the circus," Holland says. "They drank me out of every bottle of tequila I had, all the good stuff. He told me some stories about some bars in Hamburg that were pretty crazy," Holland says. "They had to do with some very nice-looking females that were not females. He had lime but no salt," Holland says. "So thats like half a training wheel. Salt and lime are called training wheels."
2006-10-21 - Copenhagen, Denmark. Harald Schwammer, Debbie Olson
The International Elephant Foundation and the Copenhagen Zoo are pleased to announce the International Elephant Research Symposium October 21-22, 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark. This important symposium will concentrate on veterinary issues, including the Endotheliotropic Elephant Herpes Virus (EEHV), reproductive, physiological, and behavioral research and in situ elephant conservation issues. In addition, the symposium will host a special poster session of elephant facility design.
2006-10-21 - AKITA, Japan.
Hanako, a 17-year-old African elephant at Akita Municipal Omoriyama Zoo, is struggling with a torn trunk, zoo officials said. The injury, as disruptive for elephants as serious hand injuries can be for humans, is making it difficult for Hanako to eat and drink, but is not expected to lead to other health problems. Zookeepers have her taking regular doses of antibiotics, while keeping close watch over her condition.
2006-10-20 - Udawalawe, Sri Lanka. Ranil Amarasuriya
A Sri Lankan elephant (Elephas maximus maximus) ponders an incursion by photographers while having a light snack in the Udawalawe National Park. Captured on August 14th 2006 with a Canon EOS 30D (EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 III) on aperture priority (f/5.6) with a resultant shutter speed of 1/1250th of a second at ISO 400
2006-10-20 - Toronto, Canada. Loops666
Elephants at the Toronto zoo! This was a behind-the-scenes tour for employees, as part of our Bush Camp I don't know if it works the same way for the public.
2006-10-20 - JOHANNESBURG, South Africa. Moyiga Nduru
Concern about ivory sales in Southern Africa is persisting among environmental groups, this after CITES granted Japan stockpile buyer status earlier this month. "We are extremely concerned by CITES giving Japan their blessing," Jason Bell-Leask, Southern African director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told IPS. "Its difficult to distinguish between illegal and legal ivory in Japan...We do not believe that Japan has done enough to prevent the (illegal) trade in ivory."
2006-10-19 - CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh.
A herd of wild elephants rampaged through Jangalgunagari village, 350 km (220 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka, in southern Bangladesh on Thursday, killing five members of a family. Two children were among those trampled to death by the herd of about 10 elephants. The elephants also destroyed five bamboo huts and damaged crops before they were chased away by police firing blank shots. Villagers also torched bushes and lit firecrackers to scare the animals away.
2006-10-19 - Virunga, Congo.
Lake Edward in the centre of the park in the Democratic Republic of Congo was once home to Africa's greatest concentration of these magnificent beasts. But during the last fortnight alone, more than 400 hippos have been slaughtered as well as a number of buffalo, elephants and other animals. Conservationists at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) say that a Congolese militia group is understood to have killed half the hippo population in the park since setting up a base there two weeks ago.
2006-10-18 - Voorhees, United States. Nancy Gentile
It was upsetting to learn that the elephants will be leaving the Philadelphia Zoo because of lack of space and funding. The elephants do deserve bigger, better accommodations, but a zoo without our elephants is a tragedy that could be avoided. I seem to recall that the city of Philadelphia and the state used public funds to help build the Linc. I have to wonder why no such funds are forthcoming to help the oldest zoo in the nation keep its elephants.
2006-10-18 - Taipei, Taiwan. Danburg Murmur
Asian elephants with Zookeepers in Taipei Zoo. Photo by Danburg Murmur, taken on October 15, 2006, with a Canon PowerShot S2 IS.
2006-10-18 - HARARE, Zimbabwe. ANGUS SHAW
The economic chaos engulfing Zimbabwe is decimating the country's once teeming wildlife, according to a conservation group, poorly trained rangers cruelly kill the animals they are meant to protect. In one case, rangers pumped at least 40 bullets into an elephant suspected of encroaching on a settlement in remote northwestern Zimbabwe, said the independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force in a report released Tuesday.
2006-10-18 - Portland, Oregon, United States.
The Oregon Zoo may enlist the skills of one of the nation's leading veterinary dentists to extract a bull elephant's infected tusk, a difficult and uncommon surgery. A 33-year-old Asian elephant named Tusko broke his left tusk 13 years ago at a private California elephant ranch. At the time, a California veterinarian sawed off the fractured portion of tusk flush with the elephant's lip, hoping it would scar over and heal.
2006-10-18 - Harare, Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean security forces have seized ivory from suspected Zambian poachers who killed eleven elephants in northern Zimbabwe, a newspaper reported Wednesday. Two of the suspected poachers were arrested in the Chizarira National Park, and a rifle and 22 tusks of ivory worth 54 million Zimbabwe dollars (216,000 US dollars) were confiscated, said the state-controlled Herald.
2006-10-18 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States.
After months of continual personal care and non-stop supplemental feedings, our dear Jenny has passed away. Over the past two years countless tests were conducted in an attempt to determine what was causing Jenny to lose weight. The illness that eventually claimed Jenny's life continues to go undiagnosed. All known tests were conducted with inconclusive results.
2006-10-18 - Dublin, Ireland.
There used to be two Asian Elephants in the Dublin Zoo (Judy and Kirsty from Chester zoo in 1991) but they have been moved to Neunkirchen zoo in Germany. A new enclosure was built in Dublin, 50% bigger than the old one, which is now the new home for the dutch elephants from Rotterdam.
2006-10-17 - JAKARTA, Indonesia.
Indonesia Brush fires that have sent a gray haze over neighboring Malaysia and Singapore scattered rare elephants in an Indonesian forest Tuesday, as the government prepared to have soldiers fight the blazes, officials said. The fires on Tuesday continued to ravage more than 200 hectares (500 acres) of conservation area for Sumatran elephants at the Tesso Nilo National Park and had forced some of the animals to wander on lands bordering with settlements.
2006-10-17 - ANN ARBOR, United States. Nancy Ross-Flanigan
The American mastodon, a massive, tusk-bearing relative of elephants, inhabited much of North America until its extinction just 10,000 years ago. New studies of bone damage on fossil remains of mature mastodon males—aided by 3-D computer graphics—indicate that some died of wounds inflicted by the tusks of other males. University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher will discuss the results at a news conference Oct. 16 during the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in...
2006-10-17 - Bangalore, India.
A herd of around 35 elephants strayed into villages on the periphery of Bannerghatta National Park (BNP) on Sunday night, creating panic among villagers. The elephants strayed into Begehalli, Ramasagara and Nallasandra villages near Jigani in Anekal taluk, three km from the BNP. The Forest Department staff burst firecrackers and chased the animals back into the BNP around 11.30 a.m.
2006-10-17 - Sambalpur, India.
Three elephants died in the Polagada forest under Rairakhol sub-division, after they had come in contact with high voltage electric wire yesterday night, forest officers in Rairakhol said. Out of the three, two were reported to be females. “Whether the elephants died after having come in contact with electricity lines or during the preventive measures by farmers to save their crops is yet to be discovered,” said Mr Raju Kumar, the conservator of forests.
2006-10-17 - JHAPA, Nepal.
Maiya Shrestha of Mangalbare VDC-1 of Shantinagar died after a wild elephant crushed her to death on Monday evening. She came under the wild beast's attack when she was returning home after collecting animal fodder at the near by forest, where she had gone with her son and husband. Both her son and husband were lucky to escape the elephant's attack, but another woman received serious injury.
2006-10-17 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Sue Lenz
These are pictures taken of my mother in the 1930's, the elephant she used to present was called "Rosie". After the family finished with the circus, she was sold to the Bristol Zoo where she gave elephant rides for many years. Mother also had a dog and pony act, as well as an act with geese.
2006-10-17 - Copenhagen, Denmark.
Foster and Partners’ first zoological building – the new Elephant House at Copenhagen Zoo - marked its’ groundbreaking today in an official ceremony attended by the His Royal Highness the Prince Consort of Denmark. The event incorporated burying a time capsule with Lord Foster’s signed sketches, which will serve as a unique reminder of the project for future generations.
2006-10-17 - Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. Daily Express
The Sabah Zoological and Botanical Park in Lok Kawi, 25km from here, is expecting the first birth of a Borneo pygmy elephant by a captive jumbo in 16 months. State Wildlife Department Deputy Director, Laurentius N. Ambu said the cow elephant was now into her sixth-month of pregnancy. "We have to monitor the progress of the elephant pregnancy. God willing, if she is healthy we will have the first captive born baby elephant in 16 months," he said at a mock cheque presentation-cum-launching of the ...
2006-10-16 - Thiruvananthapuram, India.
Captive elephants in Kerala are being given 'registration numbers' - in the form of a microchip device planted under the skin - in order to put an end to frauds committed by unscrupulous owners. "Microchip is one centimetre in length and has a diameter comparable to that of a grain of rice. This is encased in a glass pellet and has a unique code number," veteran elephant expert Jacob Cheeran told IANS.
2006-10-16 - Chiang Saen, Thailand. Jonathan Thompson
It started life on the back of a beer mat. But 25 years on, elephant polo boasts corporate sponsorship and competitions that draw teams from across the globe. This is the sixth year of the Cup, which takes place annually with royal consent - a valuable commodity in Thailand - organised by the Anantara resort group. This year it has relocated to the elephants' natural habitat, the Golden Triangle, having transferred from its usual home, the southern beach resort of Hua Hin.
2006-10-16 - Jalpaiguri, India.
Two elephant tusks were recovered from an imam of a local mosque, by forest department personnel at Chuniajhora tea garden area of West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district. Anwar Ansari was arrested yesterday, the last day of the wildlife week, an oppurtunity he had used to procure the tusks, forest department sources said. Buying or selling of elephant tusks is banned in the country.
2006-10-15 - Albuquerque, United States. Albuquerque Biological Park (Rio Grande Zoo)
The 2006 Elephant Managers Assocation Conference host is the Albuquerque Biological Park. This year’s theme is “Elephant Breeding and Births.”
2006-10-15 - Johannesburg, South Africa.
A South African scientist has expressed concern over the apparent high number of elephants maimed apparently by wire snares laid by poachers to trap game in the northern parts of the country. Professor Rudi van Aarde, head of conservation ecology research at the University of Pretoria, has seen at least seven elephants with parts of their trunks missing during a recent visit to the Mapungubwe National Park.
2006-10-14 - KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia.
Malaysia Wild elephants rampaged through a Malaysian plantation district, trampling more than 1,000 banana and rubber trees, a news report said Saturday. At least four elephants believed to be foraging for food ventured out of a jungle Friday and tore through a rural plantation in the northern state of Kedah, shocking villagers whose livelihood depends on the crops, The Star newspaper reported.
2006-10-13 - Pondicherry, India. Ingmar Lee and Krista Roessingh
We are appealing for your immediate help to protect South India’s last significant herds of Wild Elephants! The most seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the protection of the elephants is, quite tragically, rampant bureaucratic inertia. Please take a few moments to familiarize yourselves with the predicament of these magnificent animals!
2006-10-13 - BHUBANESWAR, India.
Two elephants were found dead in a paddy field in Lahanda under Keonjhar districts Joda police limits on Thursday. The pachyderms, both juvenile females, are believed to have been poisoned. There was no sign of any external injury nor was there any electricity supply line in the vicinity to suggest that the two could have been electrocuted, sources in the department said.
2006-10-13 - Moshi, Tanzania. PETER TEMBA
ABOUT 150 hectares of food crops in the newly created Siha district in Kilimanjaro region have been destroyed by elephants for the past 18 months, District Commissioner Anna Nyamubi has revealed. Briefing the Minister of State in the Vice-President's Office (Environment), Professor Mark Mwandosya, while on tour of Kilimanjaro region, she said game rangers had been alerted about the marauding jumbos which have also destroyed three hectares of trees.
2006-10-13 - New York, United States.
Does "violent retaliation" sound like anthropocentric overstatement? How, then, to describe an elephant's goring of a tourist or farmer who had done nothing, personally, to annoy? Or a herd's selective trampling of crops and huts on the edge of its shrinking reserve? Or routine blocking of roads, and charging of vehicles that come too close?
2006-10-13 - Ayutthaya, Thailand. APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
Continuing floods in Ayutthaya have made life difficult for elephants. The management of the Ayutthaya Elephant Park has had to move over 12 elephants under its care onto a road near Wat Maheyong in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district as the site has been submerged since early this month. ''We have never faced such a crisis before. Water came very fast and the current was so strong that we had to move the jumbos from the park,'' manager Kannapoj Tipwong said yesterday.
2006-10-13 - Shimoga, India. Rajesh Kamath/Darius Taraporvala
It was a very special day for the elephants of Sakkare Bele Camp. All their months of training was tested on the annual sports day for elephants. It was the day when all the elephants came out to play. "On this Elephant Day we have arranged competitions like banana and sugarcane eating and pure simple commands from mahouts that elephants can follow," said Melochago, DCF, Wildlife Department, Shimoga.
2006-10-12 - Delhi, India. Justin Huggler
Attacks by elephants on humans, both in Africa and India, have been increasing dramatically in the past five years. As villagers tell of 'revenge raids', scientists argue that loss of habitat and social structure is seriously destabilising these magnificent creatures.
2006-10-12 - Luanda, Angola.
Although the elephant population is on the rebound in east and south Africa, elephants in Angola may soon become a thing of the past because of the thriving illegal ivory trade. There were about 12,400 elephants in Angola in 1981, but that number dropped during the former Portuguese colony's war. The number of elephants in Angola has been reduced to no more than 246, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
2006-10-12 - Quang Nam, Vietnam.
A stampede of four wild elephants have destroyed more than 10ha of crops and hundreds of ha of forest in the central province of Quang Nam’s Tra Doc Village over the past few days. No casualties have been reported. The elephants arrived in the area early last month and are still roaming the forests and mountains of Tra Doc Village.
2006-10-12 - Monrovia, Liberia.
Reports emanating from Lofa County speak of elephants invading villages and farms, as well as destroying crops before returning into the forest. Although the situation is being investigated, several aid workers and residents of the county who claim to have returned from some of the affected villages and towns, told The Analyst in Monrovia that the repeated attacks on crops by the animals have caused massive displacement of villagers in several villages around the provincial city of Voinjama.
2006-10-12 - BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa. Vishnu Naidoo
In this past week members of the Beit Bridge border post, under the command of Director Joseph Makushu, arrested ten foreign nationals for attempting to smuggle drugs and jewellery made from Ivory through the Beit Bridge border post. The suspects are likely to be charged with Dealing in Drugs and they are expected to appear in the Musina court before the end of tomorrow.
2006-10-12 - Washington, United States.
A census of elephant populations in Zimbabwe, equipment for scouts in a game management area in Zambia, and research on re-establishing a viable population of tigers in southwest China are just a few of the wildlife conservation projects around the world receiving support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Almost $750,000 in grants is being awarded to projects in Asian, Caribbean and African nations to aid in the conservation of creatures such as rhinos, elephants, gorillas, chimpa...
2006-10-11 - Quang Nam, Vietnam.
A group of four wild elephants on Tuesday ravaged a mountainous village of farmers in Vietnam’s central province Quang Nam, reported local authorities. Luckily, no one has been injured or killed, but the elephants – including three mature and a young one – devastated over ten hectares of crops in the 5th village of Tra Doc commune in Bac Tra My district. The group appeared in the evening, apparently scavenging for food and vegetables, chasing locals around in the process.
2006-10-11 - BANDA ACEH, Indonesia.
Wild elephants who are losing their natural habitat are encroaching on residential areas in Trumon Timur, southern Aceh, destroying hectares of crops, when three elephants came down on a rice field and destroyed the crops. The frequency of elephant incursions into human settlements has increased over the past two weeks after the Leuser International Foundation withdrew two trained elephants that had been used to scare away the local elephants.
2006-10-11 - CAPE TOWN, South Africa.
A herd of elephants and a church are caught up in the South African government's efforts to redistribute land to black communities evicted under white rule and right one of the great wrongs of the apartheid era. Local authorities agreed earlier this year that professional hunters should be brought in to kill the mighty mammals. Animal rights activists protested and on Tuesday announced that they had raised enough funds to move the elephants to a wildlife sanctuary called SanWild in the Limpopo p...
2006-10-11 - Brownsville, United States. SARA INÉS CALDERÓN
Reports of an elephant crossing the river or people trying to smuggle an elephant across were rampant Tuesday while an elaborate political stunt was taking shape near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The elephants came from Shrine Circuses, said James Plunkett, who produces the circus. They arrived in Brownsville on Monday and were scheduled to be on their way to Maybank on Tuesday afternoon. The elephants and the crew were at the Rio Grande for less than an hour, Plunkett said.
2006-10-11 - LAKE BUENA VISTA, United States. STEPHEN MAJORS
At Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom, head veterinarian Mark Stetter demonstrates the 5-foot contraception tool for a procedure that he hopes will help control Africa's elephant population: vasectomies. The theme park's plan is the latest attempt to deal with what African officials say is overpopulation, although conservationists dispute that. While those who live far from elephants may think they are endangered, thousands of them have been killed in Africa because of concerns that they had ove...
2006-10-11 - Manila, Philippines. Mark Ivan Roblas
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Monday filed criminal complaints against 21 persons, including 13 personnel of the Bureau of Customs, for their involvement in the pilferage of elephant tusks seized last year by government operatives. Facing charges for violating the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Antifencing Law, qualified theft/robbery and gross neglect of duty
2006-10-11 - Opuwo, Namibia. Michael Liswaniso
So-called problem animals - but more especially elephants - are regarded a danger to members of the community as they cause havoc in most parts of the Kunene. Recently, a villager at Otuani village endured a broken leg and is still recovering in the Oshakati Hospital as a result of an elephant attack. A homestead was destroyed by an elephant at Okahua, while a chain of tombstones were destroyed recently.
2006-10-10 - Limpopo, South Africa.
TWELVE elephants in KwaZulu-Natal that were to have been shot have been reprieved and will be moved a wildlife sanctuary in Limpopo, Animal Rights Africa said today. Due to a successful land restitution claim, the entire Thukela Biosphere Reserve, near Weenen, now has new owners who do not want the elephants on their newly returned land. The elephants, orphaned by culling in the Kruger National Park, were taken to Thukela Biosphere Reserve in the early 1990s.
2006-10-10 - Harare, Zimbabwe. Kudzanayi Shumba
Precious Nyoni, 35, resident of the Gokwe district in southwest Zimbabwe, surveys his garden. The vegetable and sugarcane stalks are flattened, and half-eaten crops lie all around. This was his only livelihood, and in one night, it is all gone. "They are too many and I believe they should be reduced through a culling exercise. Just recently, elephants destroyed 50 hectares of maize crop belonging to some villagers. It means that all of us need food assistance even before we have harvested," Nyon...
2006-10-09 - LUANDA, Angola.
The Cafe del Mar looks like any other expensive restaurant on Ilha de Cabo, the fashionable beach playground for foreigners and rich Angolans in Luanda. But it has a special attraction: a small but well stocked curio kiosk with neat rows of ivory carvings, a popular but now illegal souvenir for tourists in much of Africa. "Yes, we're very popular," said the shop's owner. "Here is our Angolan ivory," she said, waving her hand toward a cluster of white statues. Despite a shrinking population of el...
2006-10-09 - Tamil Nadu, India.
Two women and a child were crushed to death by some wild elephants when they entered the village Alimnagar in Akkaraipattu in Amparai district Sunday night around 09:30 p.m. Marauding elephants Sunday evening entered after dusk charging residents and damaged several huts. Elephants had dragged the victims out of their huts and dashed them on the ground.
2006-10-09 - Grand Rapids, United States. Buckles Woodcock
This just in from KLSDAD who saw the Ken & Nicole Show in Grand Rapids on Sept. 30. He said he enjoyed the show thoroughly, especially after having seen the other unit earlier in the Garden. There are obviously some good acts on the show, Bello Nock is probably the most famous circus personality in America but this picture tells another story, I only count around 20 performers styling, not enough people for a good fist fight.
2006-10-09 - Ranchi, India.
Fear of revenge by a herd of elephants has forced people in a Jharkhand village to flee from their homes following the death of a baby elephant after it fell into a well. A baby elephant fell into a well in Banta village Saturday night, about 70 km from here after it got separated from the herd. The elephant finally succumbed to injuries Sunday morning despite a valiant rescue bid by the villagers and forest department officials.
2006-10-09 - Philadelphia, United States.
THE NEWS that Philadelphia will be losing Kallie, Bette and Petal, the three African elephants that the Philadelphia Zoo is transferring to Baltimore because it can't afford a necessary expansion, surely has us sad, but also concerned. Maybe it's selfish, but we can't help wondering: How can you be a world-class city without elephants?
2006-10-09 - Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Wild elephants dragged two women and a seven-year-old girl out of their huts and then crushed them to death in a village in eastern Sri Lanka, plocal police officer AWA Gafar said on Monday. The elephants entered the village of Mohinipuram in Ampara district at dusk on Sunday, charging at residents and creating panic among villagers. He said the elephants pulled the victims from their homes then killed them.
2006-10-08 - Melbourne, Australia.
THREE young Asian elephants bound for a breeding program in the Melbourne Zoo are expected to arrive before Christmas. The three — 12-year-old Dokkoon and five-year-olds Kulab and Num-Oi — will be used in Australia's first elephant breeding program. The Melbourne Zoo's Judith Henke confirmed that the animals would arrive before Christmas, but there was no firm date yet. "They are thriving and have been enjoying their time on the Cocos, rolling in the sand and eating coconuts," she sa...
2006-10-08 - Geneva, Switzerland.
Japan meets the requirements to take part in a limited one-off sale of elephant ivory, according to a U.N.-sponsored group. Members of the 1989 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species agreed Friday that Japan has established sufficiently strong domestic controls on the sale of ivory to qualify as a trading partner. However, for the time being Japan cannot buy the consignment of 60 tons of ivory from three southern African countries because CITES decided Thursday to postpone a vot...
2006-10-08 - Philadelphia, United States.
The elephants at the Philadelphia Zoo have fascinated kids and former kids around here for generations. Many of us remember staring in awe at the magnificent animals, waiting for them to lift their trunks and trumpet. They were our wide-eyed introduction to the wonders of wildlife. But times and attitudes change. Whether elephants should be in zoos at all is a controversy. But just about everyone agrees that the confined spaces of old zoos and freezing temperatures in northern states are bad for...
2006-10-08 - Los Angeles, United States. CHARLES SIEBERT
Were not going anywhere, my driver, Nelson Okello, whispered to me one morning this past June, the two of us sitting in the front seat of a jeep just after dawn in Queen Elizabeth National Park in southwestern Uganda. We’d originally stopped to observe what appeared to be a lone bull elephant grazing in a patch of tall savanna grasses off to our left. More than one “rogue” crossed our path that morning — a young male elephant that has made an overly strong power play against the dominant...
2006-10-07 - Philadelphia, United States. Julie Stoiber
The Philadelphia Zoo announced yesterday that it will close one of its most popular and enduring exhibits - the elephant habitat - at a time when many zoos are launching elephant expansions and breeding programs as part of a nationwide push to reinvigorate the captive population.
2006-10-07 - Houston, United States. Daryl Hoffman
The latest addition to the Houston Zoo collecion was born Oct. 1 at 4:40 AM, he's 40" tall, 40" long and a massive 384 pounds. Mother and calf are doing great. The Dam is Sahanti. This is her second birth at the Houston Zoo. She was born at the Lincoln Park Zoo in 1990. She then wove her way through the Buffalo Zoo and Murray Hill's farm before going to the Houston Zoo in 2001. The Sire is Thai. Most of you know him from being in Eloise Berthtold's act. After Morgan Berry passed away, Thai went ...
2006-10-07 - Sydney, Australia.
EIGHT Asian elephants on their way to new homes in Australia have passed crucial quarantine checks, paving the way for their arrival in December. The elephants began their controversial journey from Thailand in June and have been held in quarantine on the Cocos Islands, 2750km north-west of Perth in the Indian Ocean. Four female elephants and one male will be housed at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, while the remaining three elephants will go to Melbourne Zoo.
2006-10-07 - Philadelphia, United States. Mitch Lipka
It turns out that moving elephants is a lot less complicated than it might seem - and fairly common. Sure, they're big. And, yes, it takes quite a bit of preparation. But, in the end, the 8,000-pound elephant walks into the back of a semi-trailer and is driven to its destination. Circuses and zoos do it all the time. And elephants - for those worried about the four leaving the Philadelphia Zoo by the spring - are pretty good travelers.
2006-10-07 - Houston, United States.
Martina Stevens, 27, is the Houston Zoo's elephant manager. A graduate of Western Michigan University, where she majored in biology and minored in chemistry, she is an animal lover who owns three dogs and a bunch of frogs. She has worked at the zoo for four-and-a-half years, always with elephants. Since the arrival of the zoo's new elephant calf Oct. 1, Stevens has been one of the keepers watching over the delicate bonding process between Shanti, a 15-year-old Asian elephant, and the calf.
2006-10-07 - Cocos Islands, Australia. BETH AARON
Congo supposedly won't forget me and I certainly won't forget her. Sitting on an animal that stands about 8 feet tall, I wanted to hold on, but her rough, gray skin didn't make the best handrail. I grasped at her ears and tried to steady myself between them. Congo moved her 5,460-pound body in small circles in the parking lot of the Science Spectrum with me wobbling on top of her.
2006-10-07 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
Hi Buckles, I saw on the Blog that some people thought we filmed those commercials on Blue Screen and added the girl after, let me assure you we did not. The shots were all done with the little girl right there and George was a little soldier. Here are some of the photos from the shoot. We filmed the beach scene up on Lake Huron and we had to swim George out to a platform and when they shot we had to duck under the water. Lake Huron is cold and it is deep too. Charlie
2006-10-06 - Guruvayur, India. S. Chandrasekhar
Thirupathi, Sabarimala and Guruvayur are the three major temples in South India visited by crores of devotees, all through the year. If there is some attractive magnetic force which differentiates Guruvayur from other temples, it is the temple owned elephant home, popularly known as Aanathavalam or Punnathur Kota. As per records of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, it is the only temple-owned domesticated elephant home in the whole world.
2006-10-06 - Waco, Texas, United States.
The Waco Mammoth Site tells an amazing story of the prehistoric elephant's natural parenting instincts. Although not currently open to the public, the site is being considered for inclusion into the National Park Service. The archeology site is unique because it preserves a herd killed by natural causes, and it includes adults and juveniles, says Russ Whitlock, superintendent of the LBJ National Historic Park and state coordinator for NPS. "We can learn a lot about the period from the bu...
2006-10-06 - Baltimore, United States.
Elephants Dolly and Ana have long reigned as a major attraction at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Petal, 50, Kallie, 24, and Bette, 23 - who reside at the Philadelphia Zoo - will join Dolly, 30, and Ana, 32, in an effort to ramp up breeding possibilities at the zoo, an important aspect of the zoo's missions of conservation and ecology. The species has dwindled in recent years.
2006-10-06 - MUMBAI, India.
Elephants in India's financial capital are to be microchipped to make sure unlicensed pachyderms don't give authorities a jumbo-sized headache. "A microchip is like a voter identity card: if an elephant doesn't have one, we'll know it's in the city illegally," said Sarfaraz Khan, deputy conservator of forests for Mumbai's Thane district and the driving force behind the initiative.
2006-10-06 - Jacksonville, United States.
The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens has added two female African elephants from a Kansas zoo as part of a transfer of breeding animals. A pair of 24-year-old elephants recently arrived at the zoo from Lee Richardzon Zoo in Garden City, Kan. The animals had been at the Kansas zoo since 1986. Jacksonville Zoo has one of only a few reproductive-age African bull elephants in North America.
2006-10-06 - Coimbatore, India.
A thirsty elephant looking for water drank fermented wash and died yesterday at Anaikatti forest area, about 45 km from here, along the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, Forest department sources said today. The pachyderm had strayed from its herd in search of water and run amok in Sholayar in Kerala a few days back. It had consumed the wash, containing ammonium sulphate and battery acid, from a reserve forest area in that state where illicit distillation activities were going on, the sources said.
2006-10-06 - Plettenberg Bay, South Africa.
The Elephant Sanctuary is located about 20 miles outside of Plettenberg Bay. We had the opportunity to learn about, feed and stroke the elephants. Bill, Keith, Barbara and I were fiercely brave and rode the elephants. The views on top of the elephant were great but it was a little scary getting on and off.
2006-10-05 - Bijnor, India.
Uttar Pradesh Police arrested two men in Bijnor and recovered from them an elephant tusk, worth thousands of dollars in the international market. "My informer told me that some people are involved with elephant tusk smuggling. I went to the spot along with my informer and other officials. One of the three ran away, but we arrested two and recovered an elephant tusk," said, Javed Khan, a police officer.
2006-10-05 - St. Louis, United States. Diane Toroian Keaggy
Maliha, the St. Louis Zoos 2-month-old Asian elephant, will remain off display through the weekend and perhaps longer, as keepers try to boost the calf's weight. Maliha had lost about 30 pounds during the past several weeks and was taken off display last week. Curator Martha Fischer said the calf's weight is now stable, but keepers want to continue to observe Maliha and her mother, Ellie. Keepers have been pumping formula through a stomach tube and are trying to teach Maliha to nurse from a bott...
2006-10-05 - Helsinki, Finland.
Finlands most recent mammoth bone finding was made in an unusual place, namely in the garage of Professor of Genetics Marja Simonsuuri-Sorsas home in the Espoo suburb of Tapiola. A piece of a bone, a humerus from a mammoths left front leg, lay hidden in a cardboard box for over 40 years. Simonsuuri-Sorsa was a young biologist in 1960, when she found a large piece of bone in a summer cottage potato patch in Suomusjärvi. She had just finished a course in paleontology and wondered excitedly whethe...
2006-10-05 - Mysore, India.
The Dasara elephants, after discharging their duty, have embarked on their return journey to the forests along with the mahouts and their families, from the Palace premises this morning. The jumbos Harsha, Vikram and Vijaya will return to Dubare elephant camp in Kushalnagar while Abhimanyu and Srirama will return Murkal in Nagarahole forests and Mary to Sunkadakatte camp.
2006-10-05 - PHILADELPHIA, United States. Vernon Odom and Bob Monek
As first reported by Action News on 6abc.com, the Philadelphia Zoo has decided to part ways with its elephants. The announcement that the elephant exhibit would be closed came at a news conference this afternoon. The African elephants - 50-year-old Petal, 24-year-old Kallie and 23-year-old Bette - will be moved to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. 42-year-old Dulary, an Asian elephant, will go to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.
2006-10-05 - Geneva, Switzerland.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has decided not to allow exports of elephant ivory from Botswana (20 tonnes of ivory), Namibia (10 tonnes) and South Africa (30 tonnes) to proceed at this time. This issue will now be considered at the next meeting of the Standing Committee, which will take place in late May 2007 in The Hague, The Netherlands.
2006-10-04 - Bangkok, Thailand.
In Ayutthaya province, gradually rising waters forced mahouts to relocate all elephants in the ancient royal elephant corral to higher ground after barriers installed by the labour of the elephants themselves failed to withstand the strong currents. Most residents have been forced to travel by boats or have evacuated to other areas.
2006-10-04 - Savute, Botswana. Damian Whitworth
Lions are among the animal kingdom’s most brutal and efficient predators but no one had heard of them hunting elephants before. These two big beasts of the savannah have plenty of mutual respect and normally give each other a wide berth. The BBC’s Natural History Unit decided to send a film crew to try to capture a hunt on film and invited The Times to join them.
2006-10-04 - San Andreas, United States. Maveric Vu
Minnie the elephant has been performing in circuses for the majority of her 51 years. With arthritis and a host of other health problems, Minnie retired from show business and spends her time relaxing on the quiet acres of an animal sanctuary. “These animals have seen enough people in their lifetime,” said sanctuary co-founder Edward Stewart.
2006-10-04 - Geneva, Switzerland.
The sale of a huge cache of ivory is due to be given the go-ahead this week, in only the second legal sale since CITES banned the trade in 1989. At the time of going to press, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora was expected to approve the shipment of 60 tonnes of ivory from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa for sale in Geneva on Wednesday.
2006-10-04 - Vallejo, United States. AZA.org
Job Duties: Clean animal enclosure areas including: log show, elephant theatre, rides, yard, pool and barn. Hose down pathways, theater seats, Arena, back staging area, barn floor and squeegee or sweep puddles as directed. Rake log show sand and rides trail as directed. Sweep theatre and pathways ensuring that the area is clean and free of all debris and puddles as directed. Shovel elephant waste and soiled hay into wheelbarrow and empty into waste dumpster.
2006-10-03 - Madrid, Spain.
The 23rd Annual Conference of EAZA will be hosted by Zoo Aquarium Madrid, Spain from 3 to 7 October 2006. The Conference itself will take place at Palacio Municipal de Congresos, a highly modern conference centre, conveniently located at only one metro stop away from the international Madrid Barajas airport.
2006-10-03 - Windhoek, Namibia. Absalom Shigwedha
ANIMAL rights groups continue to oppose requests by Namibia and two other southern African countries to be allowed to have a one-off ivory sale. One such group is the Survival Species Network (SSN). On Sunday, a Namibian delegation headed by Environment and Tourism Permanent Secretary Dr Malan Lindeque left for Geneva, Switzerland, to attend the 54th Standing Committee meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
2006-10-03 - Cameroon, South Africa. Mike Loomis
We have not been able to collar an elephant in southern Cameroon. We have had a couple of shots, but the heavy vegetation and bad weather have made it impossible to accomplish what we hoped to accomplish; we had a very hard time getting out of the forest and back to Yokadouma. I'll be working next in Waza National Park and northern Cameroon.
2006-10-02 - Glasgow, United Kingdom. Samantha Booth
DID you know that bees can recognize individual human faces? Or that Dracula ants suck the blood of their young? Or that rats can learn the difference between Dutch and Japanese? No, neither do most people, but scientists have been discovering these bizarre facts for years. Now they have been compiled in a fascinating collection by animal lover Matt Walker called Moths That Drink Elephants Tears and Other Zoological Curiosities.
2006-10-02 - Nairobi, Kenya. Philip Mwakio
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has embarked on the second phase of the elephant translocation programme. Mr Patrick Omondi, the KWS Head of Species and Management Conservation, told The Standard that yesterday a family of five elephants and one bull were moved from the Shimba Hills National Reserve to Tsavo East National Park on Saturday.
2006-10-02 - Masai Mara, Kenya.
Patrick Smith, 34, from London, was trampled to death in the Masai Mara game reserve on Sunday while on a honeymoon nature trail with his wife Julie. It is understood the couple, both employed by the global media group Reuters, had been married for just one week before Mr Smith's death. In 2000, another Briton was trampled to death by an elephant in the Masai Mara reserve, when he ventured out of a secure compound to take a photograph of it.
2006-10-02 - KOLLAM, India.
The programme of implanting electronic identity cards in the form of microchips on captive elephants was inaugurated here on Monday by Kerala Forests Minister Binoy Viswam at the start of the Wildlife Week celebrations in the state. About 800 captive elephants would get the device under the programme. The chip will be implanted through a minor procedure by a veterinary surgeon, the sources said.
2006-10-02 - Loxahatchee, Florida, United States. Ivette M. Yee
After 25 years at Lion Country Safari, the peaceful pachyderms are moving to other elephant-friendly places in the United States. They've been the only African elephants for the public to see in Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties, but now they're leaving. Until this summer, the island, located on a mock African plain, was also home to Bulwagi and Ladybird. Bulwagi is now at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, and Ladybird is at the Greenville Zoo in South Carolina.
2006-10-01 - Berlin, Germany. Ehlers B, Dural G, Marschall M, Schregel V, Goltz M, Hentschke J. . Robert Koch-Institut Berlin
Endotheliotropic elephant herpesvirus (elephantid herpesvirus 1; ElHV-1) is apathogenic for African elephants (Loxodonta africana), but causes fatal haemorrhagic disease in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). This is thought to occur through transmission from African elephants in places where both species are housed, such as zoological gardens. The virus has caused considerable losses in North American and European zoological gardens and thus severely impedes breeding of the endangered Asian elep...
2006-10-01 - Mysore, India.
A slice of the royal Orient of yore will be seen on Monday when majestic elephants take centre stage to add lustre to the Vijayadashami procession to mark the grand finale of the Mysore Dasara celebrations. Balarama, who is 48 years old and a veteran of 12 Dasara processions, will carry the Golden Howdah with the idol of the goddess Chamundeshwari. He was captured in 1987 in the Kattepura forests and succeeded Drona who was electrocuted in 1998 in the forests of Nagarahole.
2006-10-01 - Houston, United States. CYNTHIA GARZA
The Houston Zoo's Asian elephant Shanti delivered a male calf early this morning after a 22-month pregnancy. The yet-unnamed baby weighed in at 384 pounds and is 40 inches long and 40 inches tall — making him the largest elephant calf ever delivered in a zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Houstonians will help pick the new baby boy's name by voting for one among a list on the zoo's Web site.
2006-09-30 - Washington, United States. US Senate Committee: Majority Press Release
Senator Inhofe writes: The Senate last night provided law enforcement the tools they need to adequately combat radical animal rights extremists who commit violent acts against innocent people because they work with animals. This bill is an important step in the effort to combat animal rights extremists increasingly violent tactics. We can no longer tolerate criminally based activism regardless of the cause it allegedly advances. This is terrorism and must be stopped.
2006-09-29 - Ayutthaya, Thailand.
The Royal Kraal celebrated their 25th elephant birth just after midnight on the 29th September 2006 with Princess MC Rangsinoppadol Ukol present to witness the extraordinary event.
2006-09-29 - Nairobi, Kenya.
Kenya's biggest elephant relocation resumed on Friday after it was suspended last year because of heavy rains. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) began the translocation of 250 elephants from a crowded coastal reserve to the country's biggest nature park, Tsavo National Park, in the country's ongoing attempt to reduce confrontations between elephants and humans.
2006-09-29 - CORVALLIS, Oregon, United States. Stephen Swanson
Providing safe, effective pain control for ailing elephants has frustrated zoos and sanctuaries for decades, but researchers at Oregon State University have zeroed in on relief for the colossal creatures. The OSU team found the effective dose of ibuprofen is six milligrams per kilogram of weight for Asian elephants and seven milligrams per kilogram for African elephants, given every 12 hours. It isn't much different than the standard human dose, except humans metabolize the drug much faster, Chr...
2006-09-29 - Yarmouth Port, United States.
The fate of the world's elephants could be decided next week at an international meeting discussing controversial ivory stockpile sales. Sixty tonnes of ivory could be approved for auction, putting elephants across Africa and Asia under renewed threat of poaching for their tusks, despite an international ivory trade ban introduced 17 years ago.
2006-09-28 - Hwange, Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe's wildlife continues to suffer terrible atrocities. Snaring is reported to be rife, with the country's larger, stronger animals (such as the elephant) sometimes managing to break free of these deadly wire traps, and later seen with hideous wire injuries. Conservationists do what they can, destroying snares, immobilising and treating suffering animals, arresting poachers and pushing for harsher penalties for their criminal acts.
2006-09-28 - Jaipur, India.
Rajasthan plans to set up a home for elephants rescued from all over the country. The centre is expected to come up in an area of about 80 hectares where as many as 50 elephants would be housed, according to the forest department here. "The centre will be run by Help In Suffering, an NGO working for the welfare of animals in Jaipur," a forest department official said.
2006-09-28 - Tampa, Florida, United States. EAZA
Tampa is committed to becoming a world-class zoo. Join our growing team of professionals as we raise standards of physical care and behavioral stimulation for our animals, and offer exciting interactive experiences for our guests. Looking for a stimulating work environment with great pay, fantastic benefits, and a strong leadership team dedicated to your professional development? Then bring that positive attitude to Busch Gardens Tampa!
2006-09-28 - ST. LOUIS, United States. Jeremy Kohler
Maliha the celebrated Asian elephant calf, daughter of Raja and Ellie, was born at 341 pounds. She had thousands of cameras aimed at her since her birth Aug. 2 at the St. Louis Zoo, but has to the alarm of Zoo veterinarians, lost weight. She hit a high of 349 but weighed in Tuesday at just 317. She gained back 4 pounds after two days of powdered formula supplements. On Thursday, the Zoo announced that Maliha has moved indoors - out of sight of her human fans - while Zoo officials watch her aroun...
2006-09-28 - Mysore, India.
The threat of mahouts managing the Dasara elephants, the main part of jumboo savari, to boycott the procession has put the organisers in a piquant situation as the demand of regularisation of mahouts' jobs awaits Government nod while the final day of procession is hardly a few days away. "When the Government has insured the golden howdah, why not the mahouts, who take utmost care of the elephant that carries it"? they asked.
2006-09-27 - Indianapolis, United States. Rob Schneider
The zoo's elephant staff selected the name from among more than 10,000 entries submitted for the name-the-elephant contest sponsored by The Indianapolis Star and WTHR (Channel 13). The name is believed to be of Arabic origin and is an African word meaning flower, flowering or shining, said Jill Sampson, senior elephant trainer. Zahara was born Aug. 31 at the zoo.
2006-09-27 - Mayu, Myanmar.
Yesterday authorities from Buthidaung Township held a meeting at the Forest Department's office to discuss searching for white elephants in the Mayu Range, which is located among Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and Rathidaung Townships, said an official report. White elephants are exalted by the Burmese community, and Burmese junta has a belief that the presence of a white elephant will bring prosperity and wealth to a country.
2006-09-27 - Maharashtra, India. Raul Dias
After actor Rahul Khanna's charged-up letter to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, urging him to ban the entry of elephants into the city of Mumbai following the tragic death of the injured elephant Roopkali, the denizens of Bollywood and the fashion world have joined hands to take this very message — that elephants belong in the wild, not in cities — across India.
2006-09-27 - Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic.
Bone fragments from a mammoth, along with the remains of another prehistoric animal were found, along with the remains of an auroch (prehistoric cow) or of a prehistoric horse," during excavations to build a commercial centre said Paleontologist Martin Holub, following Sunday's discovery in the city of Usti-nad-Labem. Stone-age hunters who lived in the area between 30,000 and 20,000 BC likely killed the mammal, Holub said.
2006-09-26 - Guwahati, India. Syed Zarir Hussain
Wildlife authorities in India's northeastern state of Assam will soon play recorded sounds of horses neighing to scare away hungry wild Asiatic elephants currently locked in deadly turf wars with humans. This was among other measures devised at an emergency meeting of experts, officials, elephant owners, and locals that concluded Monday at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam to ease the alarming man-elephant conflict in the region.
2006-09-26 - Assam, India. Joanna Benn and Jan Vertefeuille
When an elephant calf was found dead on the Sesar tea estate last year in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, workers there buried the body and erected a small temple to Ganesha over the grave. They hoped this tribute to the popular elephant-headed Hindu god would appease a nearby herd of elephants that had been wreaking havoc on their crops. The elephants, however, trampled the temple soon after it was erected.
2006-09-26 - Edmonton, Canada.
Life is returning to normal with mud baths and sugar cane snacks for injured zoo elephant Samantha. On Aug. 27, the 16-year-old African elephant lost 20 cm off the end of her trunk while exploring a gate latch. She panicked when her trunk got stuck. It tore when she instinctively yanked it back. Now, earlier than expected, she is back wooing the public from her zoo enclosure.
2006-09-26 - Samburu, Kenya. David Daballen, Save the elephants
Twins are a rarely encountered in elephant populations- said to form only 1%. Twins have only rarely been recorded in areas where the research of elephants is established. Amboseli, which is one of the oldest elephant research projects in Africa, is known to have recorded a case only once in a population and they have been researching for over thirty years. This is the first case recorded in Samburu.
2006-09-25 - Tampa, Florida, United States.
This year you can visit three AZA institutions during the conference. All three of your hosts will be holding events designed specifically for our Conference. The Florida Aquarium will be hosting the Ice Breaker, Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo will present Zoo Day and Busch Gardens Tampa will offer an evening of animals, thrill rides and entertainment.
2006-09-25 - MOUNT KENYA, Kenya. Muthigani Kiama
Naftali Marungo was outside his house guarding his maize crop one cold August night when he heard a resounding thud coming from his neighbour's compound. A rogue elephant, that had been keeping him awake for months, had fallen into a septic tank as it reached for succulent banana plants near the fence between both properties.
2006-09-24 - Lynchburg, United States.
The circus has left town, and one act may not be coming back. The elephants have been a part of Cole Brother Circus of the Stars for more than 100 years. And this was their first year back to the area after a two-year break. But it may be their last. Circus organizers say animal rights activists have made complaints in several cities, which makes it difficult for business. Now they are reconsidering which animals to use.
2006-09-24 - Mumbay, India. Anand Giridharadas
She traveled perhaps a thousand miles from India's bleak, lawless heartland to this steaming metropolis. And now, lying listless on the bed of a truck with a rope circling her feet, the migrant quit this alleged city of dreams. Before dawn on Friday, Lakshmi died in a heap of hay and sugar cane at a veterinary hospital in the heart of Mumbai. She was a part-time elephant entertainer, doing weddings and religious festivals, and she had been struck by a vehicle, whose driver was said to have been ...
2006-09-24 - Kochi, India.
'We will give free insurance cover for 500 mahouts on Nov 18 - the first day of the Tripunithura Temple festival' said E. Nandakumar, secretary of Elephant Care. The society hopes that in due course they will be able to extend the insurance cover to all mahouts in the state. There are around 700 captive elephants and nearly 1,400 mahouts in Kerala.
2006-09-24 - GUWAHATI, India.
Deadly turf wars between humans and hungry elephants in India's northeast have reached alarming proportions, say experts who plan an emergency meeting this week to tackle the problem. Elephants have killed 239 people in Assam state in the past five years while 265 elephants have died during the same period, said a wildlife department report released on Friday ahead of the meeting.
2006-09-23 - Maun, Botswana. Masunga GS, Department of Wildlife & National Parks, P.O. Box 11, Maun
In order to understand the impact of habitat changes on ecosystem processes caused by increased populations of elephants, elephant dung decomposition was studied in semi-arid Botswana. Dung decomposition rates were studied with and without the presence of arthropods, using pairs of exposed dung and dung enclosed in nylon-mesh bags, respectively.
2006-09-23 - Seneca, United States. Victoria E. Freile
Seneca Park Zoo and Monroe County officials Friday unveiled a viewing atrium — the latest addition to the new elephant habitat at the zoo. The $4.4 million exhibit, which opened to the public in April, is about five times larger than the elephants' former habitat and includes a 10,000-square-foot shelter that can house up to five elephants, and a 20,000-square-foot yard.
2006-09-22 - Leicestershire, United Kingdom. EAZA.net
We have a vacancy for an Elephant keeper to join our team of 3 caring for our Asian elephants - a group of 4 females with the youngest born here at Twycross. We have a close contact approach to elephant management and train them to obey commands, enabling healthcare maintenance to be carried out.
2006-09-22 - Mumbai, India.
Veterinarians and animal lovers at the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) hospital at Parel bid farewell to Roopkali, the 33-year-old female elephant who was injured in a truck accident on Tuesday. She died at 4.30am on Friday, BSPCA Secretary Colonel JC Khanna said.
2006-09-22 - Guwahati, India.
Wildlife authorities in Assam have warned that the human-elephant conflict has reached alarming proportions with the pachyderms straying into towns and cities looking for food. ‘The battle between humans and elephants is very serious with the beasts killing people and destroying properties and locals attacking the pachyderms and causing heavy casualties,’ said Assam’s chief wildlife warden M.C. Malakar.
2006-09-22 - Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. FAUSTINE KAPAMA
THE police in Dar es Salaam are holding a resident of Tanga and two Dar es Salaam residents allegedly for being in unlawful possession of government trophies. Kinondoni Regional Police Commander (RPC) Jamal Rwambow told reporters yesterday that the trio was found with 35 illegal elephant tusks on Wednesday afternoon at Ukoroto Street near Shekilango areas.
2006-09-22 - Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
The DNA sequence from the Cretan sample falls clearly within the mammoth clade. Thus, the name Mammuthus creticus rather than Elephas creticus, seems to be justified for this form. Our findings also suggest a need to re-evaluate the evolutionary history of the Sicilian/Maltese species, traditionally included in the genus Elephas.
2006-09-20 - Angkor, Cambodia.
A tourism official proposed to prohibit elephants from entering Cambodia's Angkor Park, right after the government enforced a ban of dog at the heritage last week to ensure its peace and cleanness, local media said on Wednesday. Moeung Sonn, managing director of Eurasie Travel and president of the National Association of Tourism Enterprises, was quoted by the Cambodia Daily as saying that the pachyderms carrying visitors to the temples might be a hazard to the daily 2,000 to 3,000 walking touris...
2006-09-20 - GARDEN CITY, United States. Tim Vandenack
Moki and Chana, female African elephants that have been tenants of Lee Richardson Zoo since 1986, will be transferred next month to Florida's Jacksonville Zoo for breeding. Officials here had a public send-off of sorts for them Tuesday. "We'll sure miss them because they have a lot of idiosyncrasies we know and love," said Kathy Sexson, director of the Lee Richardson Zoo.
2006-09-20 - Seattle, United States.
King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector dismissed a lawsuit Monday brought by local animal-rights activists against Woodland Park Zoo and the city of Seattle. The Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) and two private citizens sued in June, accusing the zoo of violating the federal Endangered Species Act and the State Environmental Policy Act with its treatment of elephants at the zoo.
2006-09-20 - Seattle, United States. RICHARD L. HILL
L.E.L. "Bets" Rasmussen, an Oregon biochemist renowned for her discoveries of how elephants chemically communicate, died Sunday in a Seattle hospital. She was 67. Rasmussen, a research professor with the OGI School of Science and Engineering at OHSU, was being treated for myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disorder. She was diagnosed with the disease in January.
2006-09-20 - Beerwah, Australia.
Bindi Irwin, daughter of 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin, touches the trunk of an elephant during a memorial service for her father at Australia Zoo in Beerwah September 20, 2006. Bindi Irwin is to wait a year before starring in a new TV nature series amid fears her childhood could disappear emulating her father's animal exploits.
2006-09-19 - Derdepoort, South Africa.
A 34-year-old ranger has allegedly been killed by an elephant at Madikwe Game Reserve near Derdepoort border post between South Africa and Botswana. David Vorster, an emergency spokesperson, says man was found dead on their arrival. He says apparently the elephant crossed the fence and reached a different camp where it met the ranger and killed him.
2006-09-19 - Detroit, United States. Moti Nissani, Donna Hoefler-Nissani. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
To date, one investigation failed to find mirror self-referential behavior in Asian elephants while another reported positive results, a contradiction which could, among other things, be ascribed to the poor visual acuity of elephants. To resolve this contradiction, the present study of mirror self-referential behavior in two captive Asian elephants bypasses the traditional mark test, relying instead on the elephants’ response to a far more visually conspicuous object. In this study, neither...
2006-09-17 - London, United Kingdom.
NO. Elephants are used to mice both in captivity and in the wild. Full-grown, healthy elephants face few pre dators, with the exception of man, and fear only unfamiliar sights and sounds. This is thought to be the cause of the myth. In Roman times, when elephants were used in war, they fled squealing pigs. This gave rise to the legend of the mouse that roared.
2006-09-15 - Calcutta, India. Subir Bhaumik
Elephants in the Indian state of West Bengal are to undergo a birth control scheme due to a lack of funds for their upkeep, the state government says. Of West Bengal's 400 elephants, nearly 70 are tame and in service to private owners or the state forest department. Forest guards use them to patrol the many wildlife sanctuaries. But wildlife conservation groups have been angered by the proposed introduction of such birth control methods for the elephants.
2006-09-15 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. Thitaram C, Pongsopawijit P, Thongtip N, Angkavanich T, Chansittivej S, Wongkalasin W, Somgird C, Suwankong N, Prachsilpchai W, Suchit K, Clausen B, Boonthong P, Nimtrakul K, Niponkit C, Siritepsongklod S, Roongsri R, Mahasavankul S. Chiang Mai University
A 32-year-old nulliparous female Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) showed signs of parturition 8 months later than predicted from the breeding records. However, while serosanguineous fluid, necrotic tissue and pieces of amnion were expelled, second-stage labor did not progress. It is suggested that serum progestagens concentrations should be monitored regularly in mated elephant cows to verify the establishment of pregnancy and to better estimate the expected timing, and the onset of calving.
2006-09-14 - seoul, South Korea. Helen Long
The 15-year-old Asian elephant called Koshick began mimicking words used everyday by his South Korean keeper. Over the past two years, the elephant's diction has improved to the point that he can reproduce discernible phrases and words. Scientists are now hoping to establish whether Koshick can actually understand language.
2006-09-14 - nairobi, Kenya.
The Kenya Wildlife Service has begun moving 150 elephants from a small reserve to its largest national park because of overcrowding with rhinos, a spokesman said Wednesday. The first 40 elephants were tranquilized and moved by truck earlier this week from the Ngulia Rhino Sanctuary, about 185 miles east of Nairobi, under the program. The remainder were to be moved by Friday.
2006-09-13 - Portland, Oregon, United States. EAZA
This position will work full-time as an Elephant Keeper and will provide basic care and handling of the Zoos large elephant collection. Performs educational presentations about the animals in their care. Supervision is received from the Elephant Supervisor. Application deadline: 10/12/06. Entry: $15.28; six months: $17.97; one year: $20.66/hour.
2006-09-13 - Kruger National Park, South Africa. Melissa Wray
What does the management of elephants have to do with abortion, cloning, HIV/Aids, stem cell research and the distribution of medicine during disease outbreaks? All of these issues are of ethical concern to South Africans and were all on the agenda at the Ethics Society of South Africa’s third annual conference held from September 11-13, 2006.
2006-09-13 - Osaka City University, Japan. Uni S, Bain O., Agatsuma T, Katsumi A, Baba M, Yanai T, Takaoka H.
A new onchocercid species, Loxodontofilaria caprini n. sp, found in subcutaneous tissues of 37 (33%) of 112 serows examined in Japan, is described. The new parasite appears to clearly illustrate a major event in the evolution of onchocercids: the host-switching. This might have occurred on the Eurasian continent, where elephantids and the lineage of rupicaprines diversified during the Pliocene-Pleistocene, or in Japan, into which some of these hosts migrated.
2006-09-12 - Springfield, Missouri, United States. Press Release, Dickerson Park Zoo
Eight weeks after her birth, Dickerson Park Zoo's newest bundle of joy has a name. The 320-pound calf will be known as Nisha (pronounced NEESH-ah), an Indian word for “night,” a reference to her overnight birth (1:35 a.m.) on July 18. Nisha's birth was the first elephant calf born at Dickerson Park Zoo since Haji in 1999 and the sixth successful birth for the zoo's herd. She is the third calf born to 25-year-old Moola and the first offspring from Sabu, the zoo's 18-year-old bull.
2006-09-10 - Copenhagen, Denmark. Bojesen AM, Olsen KE, Bertelsen MF. Dept. Veterinary Pathobiology uni Copenhagen
Two cases of fatal enteritis caused by Clostridium difficile in captive Asian elephants are reported from an outbreak affecting five females in the same zoo. Post mortem examination including histopathology demonstrated fibrinonecrotic enterocolitis. It is speculated that the feeding of large quantities of broccoli, a rich source of sulforaphane, which has been shown to inhibit the growth of many intestinal microorganisms may have triggered a subsequent overgrowth by C. difficile.
2006-09-10 - CHIANG SAEN, Thailand. Anthony Faiola
During America's debut in the extra-wide world of elephant polo last week, frustrated U.S. captain Kimberly Zenz nearly screamed herself hoarse. Zenz overcame the Thong Kao curse and scored, almost upsetting one of the top British teams with a riveting 5-3 finish. "This year, we're here to learn," Zenz said. "But look out in Sri Lanka. We won't be the rookies anymore."
2006-09-08 - Fordland, Missouri, United States. Murray Hill, founder of Animal Education Protection Information Foundation
That so called terrible beating that was administer to Sissy may have just saved a life. In her previous location she killed a man and got away with it. When she made attempts to repeat this action she was taken to task and lo and behold for the next year she attacked no one and fit into the herd. There is a difference between abuse and discipline as each is individual. I think that Ms. Buckley, Mr. Scott and all those that work around the elephants at TES should thank the El Paso Zoo elephant p...
2006-09-08 - Harare, Zimbabwe.
One of Southern Africa's most noted conservationists, Clem Coetzee, died after suffering a heart attack at his farm in southern Zimbabwe, family members and friends said on Thursday. He was 67. Coetzee developed methods to move elephants in family groups by darting them with sedatives from a helicopter and lifting them via heavy-duty rubber conveyor belts into truck containers or freight train cars, where they were revived and fed and given water for journeys of hundreds of kilometres.
2006-09-06 - Thrissur, India.
In a novel initiative, the elephant owners and mahouts in Kerala have joined hands by forming a cooperative society to handle various issues related to their trade and healthcare of the elephants. The organisers--Society of Elephant Owners, the city's Municipal Corporation and the District Tourism Promotion Council--distributed safety gears made of fluorescent material, which would reduce accidents on roads while transporting animals from one place to another.
2006-09-06 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. Ashleigh Sim
I am in Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for rescued jumbos where there are no rides, performances or work for the wrinkly ones in the 30ha grassy valley. It is the start of my 10-day stay as a volunteer at the park founded by Sangduen Chailert, 44, in 1996. Deep in the mountains 60km north of Chiang Mai, dawn breaks with not the cockerel's crow but the trumpeting of elephants.
2006-09-06 - Indianapolis, United States. Kevin Rader
This is a very exciting time at the Indianapolis Zoo. Four days ago the zoo brought a new baby elephant into the world. On Tuesday, Eyewitness News got a firsthand look at the new addition to the family. The elephants are kicking up their heels at the Indianapolis Zoo over the birth of a second baby calf in less than a year. Last October Kedar was born. Four days ago a baby girl was added to the herd. She is vocal, active and curious and she craves attention from the trainers who are spending 24...
2006-09-06 - Vienna, Virginia, United States. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey(R) today announced that a second male elephant has tested positive and is being treated for tuberculosis (TB) at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation(R). While all other elephants at the Ringling Bros. Center and on our traveling circus units have tested negative for TB, the State of Florida, following USDA guidelines, has issued a quarantine notice for the remaining elephants at the Ringling Bros. Center, with the exception o...
2006-09-06 - Pollachi, United States. M. Gunasekaran
The herd of 14 elephants continues to stay in tea estates near Valparai. They have been there for over the last one week and the forest department has sent four kumkis (tamed elephants) from its elephant camp at Kolikamuthi to drive the herd into reserve forests.
2006-09-05 - Moscow, Russian Federation.
Two residents of a village in Russia’s Siberia found unique remnants of a mammoth, stole the tusk and threw the rest away. The dismantled skeleton, discovered several days later, proved to be a sensational find with well-preserved not only bones, but muscular tissue and sinew, as well as fragments of a brown-yellowish coat, RIA Novosti reported. After that they continued the digging, throwing what they found in a pile aside.
2006-09-05 - El Paso, United States.
All eyes are on the El Paso Zoo after new allegations of elephant abuse surfaced. Last week, we reported on allegations that a long-time zoo employee beat Juno the elephant. This is not the first time Allen Seidon has been connected to animal abuse. He was caught on tape beating Sissy the elephant in 1999. After much heated debate last year, Council voted unanimously to keep the elephants in El Paso, rather than send them to a sanctuary in Tennessee.
2006-09-04 - Chiang Saen, Thailand.
The tournament takes place at the Anantara Resort, located approximately an hour from Chiang Rai where guests can lodge in comfort with private balconies overlooking scenic mountains. Sept. 1-3 are practice days leading up to a 30-elephant parade through Chiang Saen on Sept. 4. The tournament ground is a school play yard in town. Entry to the tournament is free; donations go to the National Elephant Institute which provides medical care, sustenance, employment and welfare to Thailands elephant p...
2006-09-04 - Thrissur, India.
The elephant fair in Thrissur is an inseparable part of Kerala's culture and tradition and attracts thousands of people as well as protests. Animal lovers feel the fair violates the rules for elephants in captivity. They are moving the Kerala High Court against the organisers, which include ministers, the district administration and forest officials. More than 100 elephants from different temples participated in the fair, which was witnessed by thousands of people.
2006-09-04 - UKHIA, Bangladesh.
Deep in the forests of southeastern Bangladesh, a battle rages between herds of endangered elephants and villagers. Every year, about 30 people and five elephants die in this struggle in the hills where humans are encroaching on the forests to rebuild their lowland villages washed away by seasonal floods. "Sometimes we win. Sometimes the elephants win. This is an ongoing battle," said Abdus Shukur, a 45-year-old father of three.
2006-09-03 - Pekanbaru, Indonesia. Aloysius Wisnuhardana
The residents of Pekanbaru, capital of Riau, a province in Indonesia on the island of Sumatra, were in an uproar after two wild male elephants entered the city last Thursday night. Two-and-a-half hours later, and after much effort, the two elephants were evacuated and taken to the Elephant Training Center in Minas, Riau. It is hoped the giant animals will adapt to the new environment.
2006-09-03 - Kruger National Park, South Africa. Deborah and Jonathan Smith
We filmed this whilst on honeymoon at Ulusaba private game reserve in South Africa. Its very rare to see an elephant birth in the wild. We were very lucky. Elephants are in the womb for 22 months and can walk within an hour of being born.
2006-09-02 - Washington, United States.
The Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is requesting comment on foot care for captive elephants. In a Feb. 2 petition, In Defense of Animals claimed that captive elephants suffer from chronic foot and joint problems because of inadequate space and living conditions. The group asked APHIS to issue an interpretive rule or policy to clarify conditions adequate for captive elephants.
2006-09-02 - Raipur, India. Jay Mazoomdaar
A unique solution to resolve the elephant-human conflict, that could serve as a model for conservation elsewhere, is taking shape in Chhattisgarh. Under this, different forests will be linked by revitalising existing corridors and creating new ones in a three-phase project to protect affected tribals and earmark biologically sustainable forests for an elephant reserve.
2006-09-01 - Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. Steve Bush
Elephant research at the Royal Veterinary College in Hertfordshire could have important implications for heavy lifting robots. “There are benefits from using bouncing limbs that can be exploited even at larger sizes,” researcher Dr John Hutchinson told EW. “They use the least amount of energy per kilogramme per metre of any animal,” he said.
2006-09-01 - Nairobi, Kenya.
Kenyan wildlife rangers in choppers killed a pair of rogue elephants this week after a series of fatal attacks on people in incidents highlighting growing human-animal conflict, officials said on Thursday. The rampaging bulls, blamed by locals for leading larger groups of jumbos onto farms to raid crops, were shot dead on Sunday and Wednesday near the famed Maasai Mara National Reserve and a ranch in central Kenya, the officials said.
2006-09-01 - Indianapolis, United States. Vic Ryckaert
Ivory, the zoo’s 24-year-old African elephant, gave birth to a 266-pound female calf at 9 p.m. Thursday, zoo spokeswoman Judy Gagen said this morning. Debbie Olsen, the zoo’s director of conservation and science programs, said the birth is exciting to staff, visitors and is a boost to the national organizations that monitor the elephant-breeding program.
2006-09-01 - Milwaukee, United States.
Lucy the elephant, believed to be the worlds fourth-oldest African elephant in captivity, was euthanized Friday morning after staffers found her lying down in her stall, the Milwaukee County Zoo said. The medical staff had recently decided that if the 46-year-old elephant were found lying down again, she would be euthanized, spokeswoman Jennifer Diliberti said.
2006-09-01 - Ruskin, Florida, United States. Buckles Woodcock
Just received this from Dave Price. This picture is new to me.
2006-09-01 - Wroclaw, Poland. Elzanowski A, Sergiel A. Department of Zoology, University of Wroclaw
This study recorded daytime behavior of a female Asiatic elephant at the Municipal Zoo, Wroclaw, Poland, in both an indoor pen and an outdoor paddock as continuous scan sampling for 140 hr, over 35 days in 1 year. Stereotypic sequences involved bouts of highly repetitive stereotypic movements and much more variable interbout behavior.
Lucy the elephant, believed to be the world's fourth-oldest African elephant in captivity, was euthanized Friday morning after staffers found her lying down in her stall, the Milwaukee County Zoo said. The medical staff had recently decided that if the 46-year-old elephant were found lying down again, she would be euthanized, spokeswoman Jennifer Diliberti said. In June, Lucy became ill and was unable to stand up in the African exhibit yard. A crane was brought in to lift the 9,000-pound animal ...
2006-08-31 - Darfur, Chad.
The remains of 100 African elephants killed for their tusks have been found in Chad not far from Sudan`s troubled Darfur region, conservationists said on Wednesday. "A team discovered five separate elephant massacre sites totaling 100 individuals during a survey made August 3-11 from their small plane," Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in a statement.
2006-08-31 - El Paso, United States.
The El Paso Zoo is under fire again for alleged mistreatment of elephants. Back in 1999 trainers were caught on tape abusing Sissy the elephant.That tape forced the city to send Sissy to a elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. Ironically, this latest allegation also involves Allen Seidon, one of the men videotaped beating Sissy. City officials say Seidon reportedly slapped one of the remaining two elephants during an incident.
2006-08-30 - Edmonton, Canada. MAX MAUDIE
After 20 centimetres of an elephant's trunk was torn off in a "freak accident" at the Valley Zoo, a national animal watchdog is calling for an end to elephant captivity in Edmonton. About 8:30 a.m. Sunday, before the zoo opened to the public, Samantha, a 16-year-old African elephant, reached with her trunk through a gate to a gate handle. "Her trunk got stuck and I think she panicked and pulled,"said Dean Treichel, the zoo's operations manager. "It's a freak accident.&qu...
2006-08-29 - Lampang, Thailand.
Thai veterinarians have succeeded in impregnating an elephant by artificial insemination for the first time in Thailand. The baby elephant is expected to be born in March next year. The artificial insemination was carried out by implanting fresh sperm into a female elephant named "Pangkod". Dr Sitthidej Mahasawangkul, head of the Elephant Hospital at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre said that the Thai veterinary team is attempting to develop an artificial insemination technique usin...
2006-08-29 - New Delhi, India.
An elephant at Kamla Nehru Zoo, which went berserk this morning and threw off its Mahout injuring him severely, broke open the shed where he was locked at about 7.30 pm and started wandering around its open paddock, trumpeting loudly. The elephant, Moti, had to be given three tranquiliser shots to calm him down, but he seemed unaffected and went about eating grass.
2006-08-27 - Leipzig, Germany. Leipzig Zoo
Conference theme: Sustainable management of flagship species for conservation. Agenda - Global elephant management issues - Relationship between WAZA and regional associations - Prioritisation of field projects - Conservation psychology - Global standards/ substandard zoos - Amphibian crisis - ZIMS demonstration in English - ZIMS demonstration in German - Focus on aquariums - Marketing (questionnaire) -...
2006-08-26 - Kaniyanpura, Karnataka, India.
The Kaniyanpura elephant corridor in Karnataka is Asia’s largest with 6,500 elephants using it to move from one forest to another. However, CNN-IBN has found out that the state’s booming tourism industry is preying on the space reserved for the wild. CNN-IBN Special Investigation Team has in its possession some revealing satellite images that show that the elephants, while crossing from the Mudumalai Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu to the Bandipur Forest, will now come up against a holiday resort.
2006-08-24 - Toronto, Canada. Barbara Gowdy
Remember Patsy? She's the African elephant matriarch who was euthanized a month ago at the Toronto Zoo. As described by the media, hers was a touching and inevitable death. She was 40, after all, and according to zoo CEO, Calvin White, "40 is fairly old for an elephant." Which makes you wonder: Considering that zoos tend to be poacher-free, drought-free zones, why don't zoo elephants live longer?
2006-08-24 - Santa Barbara, United States.
Michael Jackson has axed plans to sell his Neverland Ranch, and opted to get rid of his collection of zoo animals instead. A source tells the magazine, "Jackson's elephant sold to a big wheel (circus) near Los Angeles. It's also true that Jackson has four giraffes up for sale. His asking price: $35,000 a pair."
2006-08-23 - Odessa, United States. Daniel Skolfield
George Carden Circus International elephant trainer Larry Carden gives his Asian elephants Bo, left, Cindy and Betty a drink of water Tuesday as they wait for that night’s performance at the Ector County Coliseum. After the house lights went down Tuesday night, things came alive as the 2006 El Maida Shrine Circus kicked off in the Ector County Coliseum.
2006-08-23 - Durban, South Africa. Shannon G, Page BR, Duffy KJ, Slotow R., Amarula Elephant Research Programme, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal,
Elephants (Loxodonta africana) exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism, and in this study we test the prediction that the differences in body size and sociality are significant enough to drive divergent foraging strategies and ultimately sexual segregation. Males had longer feeding bouts, displayed significantly more destructive behaviour (31% of observations, 11% for females) and ingested greater quantities of forage during each feeding bout.
2006-08-22 - FORT ROBINSON, United States.
University of Nebraska Museum Director Priscilla Grew said the new Columbian Mammoth exhibit in the Trailside Museum at Fort Robinson State Park will put the western Nebraska museum on the map. It depicts the fossils of two Ice Age mammoths who died more than 15,000 years ago, tusks interlocked, during a prehistoric battle. The fossils were discovered in 1962 by a crew of students from UNL, including Mike Voorhies, who was there for the unveiling of the exhibit.
2006-08-22 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Yongyut Tiyapairat is checking the details on sending five Thai elephants and chimpanzees to China. According to the deal, Thailand will deliver five Thai elephants and chimpanzees, while China will bring in white tigers and 14 other species of animals to the Night Safari in Chiang Mai Province
2006-08-22 - Mysore, India.
Five elephants, including Balarama, the howdah elephant, arrived in Mysore city yesterday evening. Bharatha, Gajendra and Prashantha along with Balarama travelled in separate trucks from Veeranahosahalli Forest Area and reached Aranya Bhavan at about 7.45 pm.
2006-08-22 - Accra, Ghana.
The Ghana Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission has through a pilot project reduced elephant crop raiding activities around the Kakum National Park, Mr Moses Sam, a Director of the Division said on Tuesday in Accra, at the opening of a three-day international symposium on "African Elephant Conservation," being attended by about 40 participants from 20 African countries.
2006-08-22 - Whipsnade, United Kingdom. Pressrelease Whipsnade Animal Park
A new Asian elephant has joined the thriving herd at Whipsnade Wild Animal Park. Karishma arrived this month from Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire, where she was born and raised. Keepers say Karishma is settling in extremely well with the rest of the herd, which includes fellow females Kaylee, Azizah, Maya and Lucha and youngsters Euan and Anneena.
2006-08-21 - Tshwane, South Africa. Veronica Mohapeloa
The world's leading elephant scientists will meet in Cape Town on Tuesday to submit their views on the need for further research into the ecology of elephants in the country. The elephant population in the Kruger National Park alone is said to be increasing at seven percent every year, and doubling roughly every ten years. And by 2012 there may be as many as 20 000 elephants in the Kruger National Park alone, and by 2019 as many as 30 000.
2006-08-21 - NYERI, Kenya.
Kenyan villagers have tasted sweet revenge, feasting on a marauding elephant that slipped into a septic tank as it tried to eat bananas from a local farm. Farmers killed and carved up the animal with machetes as dancing residents from nearby villages at the foot of Mount Kenya joined in celebration. Kenya wildlife authorities came to remove the elephant's tusks, but did not stop the villagers' celebration.
2006-08-21 - Jagiroad, Assam, India.
Captive elephants in Assam, which literally turned to begging for a living on the roads, are back at work, with scores of them engaged in timber transport. As part of the four-lane express highway project in Assam, we are first clearing forests and cutting down trees before actual construction work begins. The elephants do the job of clearing the felled trees really fast. Manually it would have taken hours and there would have been a severe traffic jam, a contractor said.
2006-08-21 - Lampung, Indonesia.
Wild elephants ran amok and trampled to death four farmers on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The farmers were killed in Lampung province, about 200km (125 miles) northwest of Jakarta, the capital. Waktre, an elephant conservationist at the Lampung Wildlife Conservation Society, said that the cause was a shortage of food for the elephants and more human encroachment into wilderness set aside for the animals.
2006-08-19 - LONDON, United Kingdom.
It's not quite up there with uncovering the theory of everything, but answering whether elephants can run has huge potential for robotics. Researchers in Britain, after more than 100 years of debate and experiment, now say: "Yes, because they bounce like Groucho Marx." A creature used to be considered to be running if all its limbs were off the ground at the same time while moving forward. But so many exceptions were discovered that the definition had to be reassessed.
2006-08-19 - Bangkok, Thailand. ROGER CRUTCHLEY
The popular King's Cup Elephant Polo Tournament is moving north to the Golden Triangle in Chiang Rai this year and promises to be the most entertaining and competitive contest so far. After being held the past five years in Hua Hin, chief organiser of the tournament and vice president of Anantara, Christopher Stafford, felt the time had come to hold the event on the northern border in Chiang Rai ''the home of elephants''.
2006-08-18 - Lusaka, Zambia. Susan Brown
A trail of DNA has helped investigators trace the largest shipment of contraband ivory ever seized to African savanna elephants from Zambia (Zambia facts, maps, more). Ample roughage in the elephants' diets helps slough off plenty of cells from the intestines, making DNA easy to extract from dung. The size of the shipment more than 500 whole tusks and thousands of individual pieces means that elephants from a single region have been hit hard.
2006-08-17 - GIRIYONDO, South Africa. Itumeleng Seakamela
South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique opened a key border crossing for an expanded international wildlife park on Wednesday, boosting regional hopes of a major new global eco-tourist destination. "It amounts to more than allowing our wild animals to roam freely," South African President Thabo Mbeki said at a ceremony at Giriyondo, a border post which links the three countries.
2006-08-16 - Ibaraki, Japan. Kimberly Fu
After an experiment that brought frozen mice back to life, Japanese scientists are now testing the same methods on ancient woolly mammoth remains. Researchers from the RIKEN Bioresource Centre in Ibaraki, Japan worked with sperm from frozen mice and mice organs in the experiment with mice. Now, fully intact woolly mammoth bodies have been excavated from Siberian permafrost in order to perform the same procedures.
2006-08-16 - LONDON, United Kingdom.
An elephant has been captured on film as she struggled to help another who lay dying from the effects of a snakebite. The astonishing pictures reveal the depth of compassion the creatures feel for each other. Scientists at the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya recorded footage of Eleanor as she fell to the ground after being bitten. Another elephant, Grace, was seen calling out in distress and trying desperately to get the stricken elephant to her feet.
2006-08-15 - Nashville, United States. EAZA
The Nashville Zoo is accepting applications for the position of elephant keeper. The responsibilities of this position include all aspects of the daily husbandry and management of 0.3 African elephants and their facility in a free contact system. The Nashville Zoo encourages and supports participation in projects involving research, education, training, conservation and general elephant management.
2006-08-14 - Seattle, United States. Mike Penprase
As visitors to Dickerson Park Zoo watch an infant elephant darting in and out of a forest of looming adult elephant legs, they may not notice the baby proofing going on at the zoo's elephant exhibit. Head keeper Jeff Glazier and other zoo employees have been busy making sure the baby pachyderm, temporarily named "Calf," stays safe and secure. Elephant keepers are just thinking ahead, something that has to be done with the zoo's largest animals, also among its smartest, Glazier said.
2006-08-12 - Chiang Mai, United States. Lek Chailert
On 26 August 2006. Elephant Nature Park invited and welcomed the children from Love Children International Club (LCIC) to visit the herd at the park. Every year Elephant Nature Park provides this open day complimentary program for under-privileged Thai children (from young age to University age) to come to learn about the elephant in the park
2006-08-09 - Massachusett, United States.
A landmark bill that would protect elephants from abusive use of cruel and inhumane devices, such as bullhooks and chains, passed the Massachusetts Senate yesterday. The bill makes it illegal to use a bullhook or similar device on an elephant, and would also prohibit the use of chains to restrain an elephant, unless for medical treatment.
2006-08-09 - Bangkok, Thailand. Jutarat Tongpiam
Leading academic and animal rights activists yesterday called for educational, social and legal reform to protect Thai elephants and return them to their former dignity. Their demands came at a seminar titled The Future of Thai Elephants: Nearing the End? organized by the Thai Environment Network following the controversial export of eight Thai elephants to Australia last month.
2006-08-09 - KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. Elizabeth John
Biologists and wildlife rangers are using a new method to estimate the number of elephants, a national elephant survey that began in June in one of the country’s largest protected areas, Taman Negara National Park. Using a rather unlikely and unsightly indicator, elephant dung, the experts can accurately estimate herd size and the distribution of elephants within the park.
2006-08-09 - Dong Nai, Vietnam.
The Dong Nai forestry watch team has warned inhabitants not to stay late in forest areas as many wild elephants were sighted. A herd of eight to ten elephants was continuously sighted in Dinh Quan District, Dong Nai Province for over a week. The elephants often came in search of food in the mountain fields close to the forests or Gia Canh and Thanh Son communes.
2006-08-09 - Budapest, Hungary.
A fossilized mammoth skull, including a meter-and-a-half section of a tusk and several teeth, was discovered in Zok, a village near the city of Pecs in South Hungary, a spokesman for Pecs University said on Wednesday. Initial digs suggested that the mammoth had been hunted and killed by humans, which makes the find even more interesting. Mammoth fossils were last found in July, when a calf and an adult were unearthed at the shore of Lake Balaton in W Hungary, while constructing a road.
2006-08-08 - FAIRHOPE, United States. KECIA BAL
The 724 acres might look like a curious wilderness, "but I see it more as a revolution on how you manage elephants," said Barbara Baker, CEO of the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium. The zoo’s International Conservation Center will be North America’s first breeding grounds for the endangered elephants and may serve as the U.S. base for elephant experts from the Institute of Berlin.
2006-08-08 - KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa. Craig Timberg
The baobabs, which can live for thousands of years, are victims of Kruger National Park's burgeoning population of elephants, whose growing destructiveness has sparked an emotional national debate over whether to return to the controversial practice of culling. That would mean shooting entire families and butchering them for their meat, practices that animal rights activists denounce as barbaric and unnecessary.
2006-08-08 - NEW YORK, United States.
In the summerheat, tourists head north to cooler climes. This year, a manatee has joined the crowd, cruising past the nightclubs of Manhattan and continuing north, spotted in the Hudson River at least three times in the last week, first off the Chelsea and Harlem sections of Manhattan, then north. ''When we saw it surface, its back was just mammoth", said Randy Shull, Last month, trackers saw the manatee as it swam north, first near Delaware, then Maryland, then New Jersey. By Saturday, it was s...
2006-08-08 - LONDON, United Kingdom.
Elephants pay their respects to lost loved ones and venerated leaders in a way that suggests a human-like capacity for compassion, scientists have said. In a paper to appear in a scientific journal this month, researchers said Tuesday they came to this conclusion after watching how elephants on a Kenyan game reserve behaved towards a matriarch who fell ill and died.
2006-08-08 - St. Louis, United States. Diane Toroian Keaggy
2006-08-06 - Chiang Mai, Thailand.
We rescued Thong Bai from a trekking camp in January 2005. She was more than 90 year old and had no teeth. When she arrived the park she could hardly eat the grass we provided and she was so tiny. We started to make new food recipes for this old elephant, recipes she loves.
2006-08-06 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. Lek Chailert
In January 2005 we rescued two mature elephants. Mae Mai arrived at the park on the 25th and, on the 30th,we welcomed Thong Bai. Thong Bai became seriously ill in July with a sickness lasting for over two weeks. Mae Mai never left her side. Mae Mai snatched the grass and placed it in front of Thong Bai. Thong Bai passed away on 12 August. Mae Mai was devastated. She became nervous, agitated and confused. A moment before Thong Bai passed away Thong Bai urinated a very dark and unusual colour.
By Medo has been at the park since July 2006 and the young female elephant took a time to find her feet and adjust herself to her new home. Medo was familiar with loneliness for more than ten years and she will often walk away from the herd and long periods alone by the river. Some times she lets herself float and sleep in the river for many hours.
2006-08-05 - Syracuse, New York, United States.
Despite recent hardships, the Rosamond Gifford Zoo celebrated their Asian elephant collection in a big way Saturday. The annual Elephant Extravaganza, which runs all weekend gives people the opportunity to see the zoos four Asian elephants. One of them on display was Romani, who is still recovering from surgery she underwent to remove her baby elephant from the birth canal earlier this year. The breeding program at the zoo has long been considered one of the most successful in North America.
2006-08-05 - KHAO ANG RUE-NI, Thailand.
Judging from the fresh dung on the jungle floor, the tracker knows his prey can't be far away, maybe 12 miles. This is no hunt, though. It's a mission of mercy. The tracker is Suriya Pongsuwong, a veterinarian who has been curing wild elephants for 22 years. He's hot on the trail of a five-ton male elephant that at age 50 has only one tusk and is partly lame.
2006-08-05 - Thukela, South Africa.
A small family group of elephants are presently finding themselves in dire straits and urgent financial assistance is needed to save their lives for a second time. In an ambitious rescue project the three wildlife charity organisations have joined forces to raise the substantial funding that will be needed to launch Operation Jumbo Journey by the 1st September 2006. For this purpose at least $20.000 has still to be raised before this date.
2006-08-04 - WARSAW, Poland.
A Polish city has appealed to Indian industrial giant Mittal Steel to find a new elephant for its zoo after its previous Indian elephant died. Though Burma, a 40-year-old crowd-puller, died in July, trade restrictions on zoo elephants and long waiting lists mean it can take years for zoos to find replacements. "Everyone in the city is waiting for a new elephant, especially the children," said Krystina Paluchowska, a spokesperson at Krakow city hall. "It could take a long ti...
2006-08-04 - Bhubaneswar, India.
A wild elephant crushed a man to death in Orissa for pulling its tail. The elephant appeared at Badabil in Keonjhar district at about 7 p.m. Thursday, according to the Oriya daily Dharitri. The deceased, a driver, pulled the tail of the elephant out of curiosity. The elephant became furious, caught the driver by its trunk and crushed him, the report added. Police later got the man's body, whose identity is yet to be established.
2006-08-04 - Syracuse, New York, United States.
The Rosamond Gifford Zoo says 29-year-old Romani is recovering well after undergoing surgery almost two months ago. Veterinarians were trying to remove Romani's baby, who had become stuck in her birth canal. The baby elephant was dead at birth. Romani did give birth to three healthy baby elephants in the past, in 1991, 1995, and 2002.
2006-08-03 - Bangkok, Thailand. APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
A group of activists opposing the government's export of eight elephants to Australia plans to file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment for transporting elephants overseas in alleged breach of the law. Pinan Chotiroseranee, president of the Kanchanaburi Conservation Group, said the suit, to be filed with the Administrative Court, will name as defendants the ministry, the Department of Natural Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, and the Zoological Park Organisat...
2006-08-02 - St. Louis, United States.
It’s a 341-pound girl for Ellie, the Asian elephant at the St. Louis Zoo. Ellie gave birth early today after a short labor. The calf will soon have a new playmate and niece. Ellie’s daughter Rani is expecting her first calf in February, 2007. Raja is the father of both calves.
2006-08-01 - St. Louis, United States.
Veterinarians and the elephant management team at the St. Louis Zoo are monitoring Ellie, the pregnant Asian elephant, around the clock as she gets closer to giving birth. Through daily hormone analysis of Ellie's blood, the endocrinologist at the zoo has determined that Ellie's progesterone levels have dropped significantly in the last two days.
2006-08-01 - POLK CITY, United States. Eric Pera
Two elephants are under quarantine for tuberculosis at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Elephant Conservation Center in Polk City. The quarantine was issued June 9 by the Department of Agriculture following routine testing of the animals by their handlers, a spokesman for the agriculture department said. Spokesman Terry McElroy said he didn't think the potentially fatal disease had spread beyond one of the elephants. A second elephant which had close contact with the sick animal was qu...
2006-08-01 - Sydney, Australia.
Eight endangered Asian elephants have left Thailand bound for new homes in Sydney and Melbourne. Animal rights protesters delayed the elephants' departure from Thailand last month. The elephants have arrived in the Cocos Islands where they will spend three months in quarantine before taking part in a regional breeding program in Australia.
2006-08-01 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
In rural Cambodia where doctors and hospitals are scarce, poor villagers are turning to a magic elephant which is believed to cure illnesses ranging from typhoid to high blood pressure. A few times a month, Yey Proheu, a 70-year-old female elephant goes around to villages to offer relief to the sick with mahout, Pang Hy, and his assistants.
2006-08-01 - Phnom Penh, United States.
2006-07-31 - Kanchanaburi, Thailand. PIYARAT CHONGCHAROEN
Eight elephants were finally flown out of the country to Australia yesterday, despite ongoing protests by animal rights activists demanding proof they were not caught in the wild. They left the naval airport at U-tapao, in Chon Buri, aboard a huge Russian-made Antonov transport plane yesterday on a five-hour flight to Australia's Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. They will be quarantined there before going to Melbourne Zoo or Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
2006-07-31 - OSPREY, United States. HILDEGARD SCHEIBNER
Logan, who was 80 when he died of heart disease July 12, 2006, was born Oct. 14, 1925 in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, and had been with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Carson & Barnes Circus, the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus, Terrell Jacobs, and the Kelly-Miller show. He never retired from circus work. He was a night watchman for the Hanneford Circus in Osprey when he died, said his daughter, Mary Zebrini of Sarasota. He came to Osprey eight years ago from DeLand.
2006-07-30 - Shimla, India.
Environmentalists who have been celebrating the first entry of wild elephants into Himachal Pradesh in decades have something more to cheer about: a baby elephant has been born to the herd. The birth is being described as the first in the hill state where wild elephants have made their presence felt after a long time. The six elephants entered Himachal Pradesh’s Poanta valley earlier this month by crossing the Yamuna from neighbouring Uttaranchal.
2006-07-29 - Toronto, Canada. CURTIS RUSH
Patsy, the 40-year-old African elephant who had arthritis so bad it was tough for her to walk, was put to sleep Monday night, and buried in an unmarked grave Tuesday at a remote location at the Toronto Zoo. The last time an elephant died at the Toronto Zoo, the bones ended up at the Royal Ontario Museum. With no room left at the ROM for Patsy, her grave will be left undisturbed.
2006-07-28 - Washington, United States. Cassie Duong
Ambika, Shanthi and Kandula, the Asian elephants at the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington, will have more room to roam under the zoo's plans for a $60 million "Elephant Trails" exhibit that will expand and renovate their current facilities beginning in the spring of 2007.
2006-07-27 - Livingstone, Zambia.
In Africa, farmers use the spicy chemical in locally grown chilis to keep elephants away from other crops. And in a unique marketing campaign designed to help farmers and save elephants, a line of Elephant Pepper chili products is now being sold in the United States.
2006-07-27 - PORTLAND, Oregon, United States. Oregon Zoo Press release
Pet, the Oldest Asian elephant, is experiencing a health crisis, and zoo veterinary and keeper staff have run out of medical treatment options. The 51-year-old elephant and herd matriarch has degenerative arthritis and other age-related conditions, which are not responding to medication any longer.
2006-07-26 - Panaji, India.
Chief Minister Pratapsing Rane said Goa would seek the assistance of Maharashtra government to drive away the three elephants that are causing havoc in Pernem. He said every time the elephants are driven away, they return causing much damage to plantations in Bicholim and Pernem talukas. “We drove them out at a heavy cost and we also had to pay compensation to the affected persons”, Rane said.
2006-07-26 - Anaheim, California, United States.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey crews say they have several ways to help elephants deal with heat record. They're not the "high-tech" variety, but the bag of tricks includes giant ice blocks the elephants can stand on and hit with their trunks, and frozen watermelons, said circus publicist Lucia Singer. Southland heat wave as the circus prepares to begin an 11-day run at the Arrowhead Pond.
2006-07-25 - Manchester, United Kingdom. Chris Arnot
Elephants held in zoos and safari parks tend to have trouble with their feet. The hard concrete floors of enclosures bring on cracks, like athletes foot on a large scale, needing foot care. "And the English countryside doesn't really suit them," says Charlotte Miller, a research student at the Royal Veterinary College of London University. "They like mud and softer, swampier ground."
2006-07-25 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States. KRISTIN M. HALL
The death of Joanna Burke who was knocked down and crushed by an elephant has been ruled an accident, and the animal will not be destroyed. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the Sheriff's Department investigated, found that the sanctuary was in compliance with all regulations and called Burke's death an accident.
2006-07-25 - LAWRENCE, Kansas, United States.
A University of Kansas doctoral student hopes his study of an elephant named Tembo will yield clues about dinosaurs and the environment in which they lived. Brian Platt said Tembo made a natural guinea pig because an elephant is the closest living creature in terms of size, gait and the arrangement of bones in their feet to sauropod dinosaurs.
2006-07-25 - Toronto, Canada. Anne Winstanley
Patsy the elephant has died at the age of 40. The matriarch of the Toronto Zoo's elephant herd for 33 years, CEO Cal White says she was euthanized after a period of failing health due to long term degenerative arthritis.
2006-07-25 - Seoul, South Korea. Jack Kim
Hwang Woo-suk, once celebrated as a national hero, was indicted in May on charges of fraud and embezzlement. Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said he spent part of private donations for his research in failed attempts to clone mammoths, extinct members of the elephant family.
2006-07-25 - Madison, Wisconsin, United States. SUSAN LAMPERT SMITH
Some kids are scared of clowns, but I grew up fearing elephants. I'm sure I'm not the only one who vividly recalls the death of little Ruth Ellen Freedman, the 3-year-old girl who ducked under the fence at Vilas Zoo to feed Winkie the elephant some marshmallows. Winkie grabbed the little girl, pulled her through the bars and stomped her to death. It happened in 1966, but I remember it like yesterday.
2006-07-25 - MASON CITY, United States.
Its been fifty years since the North Iowa Fair started in Mason City. And for this special year, fair goers will be able to see a few special animals. Bill Bill Morris of Elephant Encounters tells NewsChannel, its a show that goes across the country entertaining and educating people about elephants. "I grew up, my father had 19 elephants when I was growing up, my grandfather before him has seven elephants, we've had elephants in our lives, that all we know is elephants."
2006-07-24 - Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Even in the distant past, when Hannibal was confronting the Roman military might in the 300 AD, African elephants were catholic as this war lord demonstrated a train of the domestic gigantic beasts, which were numbered in tens of million across the African continent. The expansion southward of the Sahara Desert was another blow to the survival of the beasts. Beyond these reasons was the increased demand for ivory.
2006-07-24 - Harare, Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has suspended the sale of its stockpile of nine tonnes of ivory to dealers for as long as no proper monitoring system has been put in place, officials said on Monday. The halt in ivory trade on the southern African countrys local market will remain in place until a committee finishes drafting a working document to be used as a guide, based on international regulations, said National Parks spokesperson Edward Mbewe.
2006-07-24 - Nairobi, Kenya.
African savannah elephants avoid climbing even minor hills because it costs them so much energy, say scientists. A four-ton elephant that climbs 100 metres would have to forage for food for an extra half-hour to replace the energy it burned, the study indicates.
2006-07-24 - LOS ANGELES, United States.
As the U.S. Department of Agriculture investigates the June death of an elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo, an animal rights group asked Monday that the probe include the 2004 death of another elephant. In Defense of Animals filed a second complaint with the Department of Agriculture asking that its investigation include the death of Tara, an African elephant found dead in December 2004 shortly after being found in a downed position.
2006-07-23 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. Phichaiyong Mayerkoo
Thai scientists are one step closer to being able to breed elephants from frozen sperm, and if an artificial insemination project continues its success, the Thai elephant will be saved from possible extinction, a researcher said yesterday. "If we are successful, Thailand will be the first country ever do artificial breeding from frozen sperm," he said.
2006-07-23 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States. Elephant sanctuary press release
For eight years, 36-year-old Joanna Burke was the primary caregiver for the The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee’s herd of rescued Asian elephants. Joanna died on July 21 following a tragic accident involving Winkie, one of her elephants. More information regarding Winkie and the circumstances surrounding this tragic accident will be released shortly.
2006-07-23 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States.
A deadly elephant attack in Hohenwald is getting national attention, and the agency investigating is urging the elephant sanctuary to come clean about what happened. The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald is a virtual island. People in Hohenwald are shocked and intrigued by the sanctuary that seems to pride itself on privacy. But, Fridays deadly attack on a handler could thrust the Lewis County preserve into the national spotlight.
2006-07-23 - Lansing, United States. Stacey Range
Looking bored, Isla swung her tail and munched on a twig she had swiped from a tree. But once her name was called, the 8,000-pound Asian elephant responded: With three quick steps forward, Isla used her full force and the harness around her massive shoulders to pull the circus tent to its peak. "The tent is up," said Ben Trumble, spokesman for the Carson & Barnes Circus.
2006-07-23 - HOHENWALD, Tennessee, United States. MICHAELA JACKSON
There is no word yet on the fate of Winkie, the Asian elephant that attacked two handlers at The Elephant Sanctuary here Friday, killing one and injuring the other. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has stated that it will not require the animal to be euthanized, but the ultimate decision belongs to the Sanctuary's board, said Doug Markham, TWRA information and education coordinator.
2006-07-23 - Hanoi, Vietnam.
Vietnamese authorities are establishing reserves for the country’s wild elephant population, which has been left without a stable source of food and shelter due to the destruction of their natural habitats. Nguyen Anh Tuan reports.
2006-07-22 - Hohenwald, Tennessee, United States. Leon Alligood
36-year-old Joanna Burke was attacked and killed, and Scott Blais who handles the 22 Asian and African elephants at The Elephant Sanctuary was injured and hospitalized, by Winkie, a 40-year-old female Asian elephant who has been at the sanctuary for six years. Fridays death at the compound is the first at the facility, which is licensed as a Class I exotic animal facility by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.
2006-07-21 - Vienna, Austria. Vienna Zoo Press release
The 5-year old Abu, born with artificial insemination in Vienna Zoo, and his mother Sabi, owned by Munich Zoo but living in Vienna since 1992, arrived early morning the 20th in Halle Zoo in German Sachsen-Anhalt, after a nightly transport performed by the company Interzoo.
2006-07-21 - Seattle, United States. Mike Keele and Nancy Hawkes
Bamboo and the other elephants at Woodland Park Zoo are healthy and thriving, and people should come see for themselves. The Northwest Animal Rights Network is simply wrong about what is best for Bamboo. What Bamboo does need is expert care, which she gets. She also needs daily, frequent interaction with humans, because she is highly bonded to people.
2006-07-21 - LOS ANGELES, United States.
Preliminary construction on a disputed 3.7-acre elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo will move forward after receiving the backing Friday of the citys Board of Public Works. The board approved $2.1 million for the General Services Department to demolish part of the existing elephant exhibit and start construction of the zoos new Pachyderm Forest.
2006-07-20 - Temerloh, Malaysia. SIMON KHOO
The National Elephant Conservation Centre in Kuala Gandah, about 40km from Temerloh, is gaining popularity. From 4,909 visitors in 2002, 11,463 in 2003 and 26,894 in 2004, and last year, a record of 38,863 visitors (26,555 locals and 12,308 foreigners) visited the elephants. Presently, 1,200 wild elephants roam jungles of Peninsular Malaysia.
2006-07-20 - Windhoek, Namibia. MARK SCHULMAN
In Namibia's north-eastern Caprivi Strip, where Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe all meet, there are thousands of elephants crossing borders at any given time.In northern Botswana alone there are an estimated 100 000-plus elephants growing at a rate of five per cent a year, and are damaging the vegetation in protected areas such as Chobe National Park at a record pace.
2006-07-20 - Edinburgh, United Kingdom. KRISTINA PEDERSEN
The elephants have been trained to paint in a bid to raise cash, from tourists, for their own upkeep and the conservation villages of Mae Sa and Lampang. Experts believe that the elephants memorize the image which they can then 'paint by rote' over and over again. Their works are being exhibited at Dundas Street Gallery in Edinburgh.
2006-07-20 - Luanda, Angola.
Herds of elephants have destroyed tuber, corn, banana, potato, beans and peanut plantations in the Angolan province of Bengo. Bengo Governor Jorge Inocencio Dombolo said elephants raided several farms in the towns of Pango, Aluquem, Bula, Tumba and Dembos. Dombolo said many of these pachyderms were tagged and had escaped from natural parks in Bengo.
2006-07-20 - LOS ANGELES, United States. Valerie Kuklenski
No three rings. No big cats. And just maybe, by next year, no elephants. Ringling's own research shows that its strongest attraction is its trained elephants, but they also cause public-relations problems for the company. Currently, Ringling has 55 elephants, around 20 of them touring with three circus units.
2006-07-19 - Malindi, Kenya. Paul Gitau, Renson Mnyamwezi
A heard of 10 elephants from the Arabuko Sokoke Forest have forced residents of Kaliapapo and Mongotini villages to retreat to their houses before dusk. Last year, elephants killed five people in the area and destroyed acres of maize plantations. The KWS and the European Union have constructed a 20-km solar fence from Mida to Kakuyuni and are looking for funds to do another 20km.
2006-07-19 - Springfield, Missouri, United States.
A 238-pound female elephant calf was born in the early morning hours at Dickerson Park Zoo. The mother, 25-year-old Moola, sired by the 18-year-old bull Sabu, delivered the calf outdoors at the zoos new cow barn after a brief labor. This is the sixth successful elephant birth at Dickerson Park Zoo, and the first since 1999.
2006-07-19 - Cape Town, South Africa. R.W.Johnson
Under the CITES, (controls the worlds ivory trade) Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe has a concession to sell lots worth $660 or less. "Elephants are now being poached across the border from Botswana and other neighbouring countries to fulfil the demand, which seems to be bottomless, said one game ranger." Two months ago Zimbabwe police caught Chinese dealers with seven tonnes of ivory, of which four tonnes came from illegal sources.
2006-07-19 - Salmon Arm, United States.
They might not be the greatest shows on earth, but they’re entertaining nonetheless. The Jordan World Circus, which performed at the Sunwave Centre recently, did so without its trained elephant or elephants. Circuses make their way around North America while several towns, including Salmon Arm, have an exotic animals bylaw that prohibits the businesses from bringing in animals such as elephants, lions and bears.
2006-07-18 - Limpopo, South Africa.
Two of more than 20 elephants that broke out of the Kruger National Park have been shot dead in the Giyani area, SABC radio news reported on Tuesday. It said rangers from the park in the Limpopo environmental affairs department killed the elephants because they were a threat to the local community. The other elephants were believed to have gone back to the Kruger National Park.
2006-07-18 - Chennai, India.
Left to the mercy of fate after the untimely death of his mother, a six-month-old baby elephant is now the much-loved inmate of a zoo in Chennai. The calf was recently rescued from the dense forests of the Tamil Nadu's Hosur division by villagers and handed over to the state Forest Department.
2006-07-18 - Kruger National Park, South Africa. Mark Schulman
Unlike many populations in Africa which remain endangered as a result of years of poaching and habitat loss, elephants in Kruger National Park are growing at a rapid rate. Since the park stopped culling elephants about a decade ago as a result of international pressure, numbers have gone from 7,000 to over 12,000. According to local officials, the park’s habitat can only sustain about 7,000 over a long period. Any more and it will add pressure to an already fragile and carefully managed enviro...
2006-07-18 - Concord, United States. SARAH LIEBOWITZ
Queenie was never an ordinary elephant. She water-skied, a talent that eluded her to Venezuela, Florida and New York City, where she appeared on The Tonight Show. In October, 38 years after Concord resident Elisabeth Dane bid her childhood pet a tearful goodbye, she tracked Queenie to a Valdosta, Ga., theme park. When Mercury Motors settled on a new slogan -"pulls an elephant, runs on peanuts"- Queenie was the model. She even found time to cultivate her artistic side; in her youth, she mastered ...
2006-07-18 - BICHOLIM, India.
If wild elephants have struck terror in Pernem taluka, they have now turned their attention to Bicholim taluka. Three tuskers on Tuesday strayed into the border villages of Bicholim taluka, including Menkurem, Kadsal and Dhumashem, destroying property in the area. It may be recalled that wild elephants had entered Bicholim last year and had killed a resident, Yeshwant Phadte of Revora-Bardez.
2006-07-18 - Giyani, South Africa. Riot Hlatshwayo
Spokesperson Moses Tseli said the original plan was to try and herd the elephants back to the Kruger, but that it was then agreed to rather kill them, following discussions with South African National Parks (SANParks). "We have to consider the safety of the people, which is why we have no alternative but to put the elephants down."
2006-07-17 - Giyani, South Africa. Riot Hlatshwayo
Women in a village neighbouring the Kruger National Park are too afraid to collect firewood and water after 26 elephants escaped from the reserve in the past week. Residents of Nsavulani village east of Giyani have seen some of the jumbos in their area. "The other day we saw a herd of about 15 of the elephants," said Madali Maswanganyi on Monday. "We can no longer go and fetch firewood because of the elephants.
2006-07-17 - Caxito, Angola.
Elephants have been destroying cassava, banana, potatoes, maize, beans and peanuts plantations, in the districts of Pango-Aluquem, Dembos and Bula-Atumba, in Angola`s northern Bengo province. Since last June, elephants have destroyed about 200 fields belonging to small farmers, which may lead to a food crisis, warned the peasants.
2006-07-17 - Dodoma, Tanzania. CONSTANTINE MUGUSI
TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, reports that, Taiwanese customs officials on Tuesday discovered 744 pieces of ivory, including whole tusks, weighing a total of 3026kg hidden in wooden boxes found unattended in Kaohsiung harbour for three weeks. The confiscation took place two days after Kaohusiung customs officials seized two and half tonnes of ivory also from Tanzania, in a raid that uncovered 18 wooden boxes with ivory.
2006-07-17 - ST. LOUIS, United States. Diane Toroian Keaggy
Asian elephant Ellie still is waiting for the stork to visit the St. Louis Zoo: Two weeks after her due date, Ellie shows no signs that labor is imminent. Meanwhile, elephant Sri continues to carry a dead fetus. She was expected to deliver a female calf last November. Her progesterone levels did drop, but labor never started.
2006-07-16 - , Malaysia.
The National Elephant Conservation Centre in Kuala Gandah, Pahang is in the news again after a mishap involving an elephant under its care, and the public are demanding better work practices among staff of the centre, reports HILARY CHIEW. Managed by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan), the sanctuary houses some work elephants used in its translocation assignments as well as provides a home for orphaned elephants.
2006-07-15 - Chanthaburi, Thailand.
An elderly wild elephant that became a Thai media star after being stuck in the mud for a week died today despite the best rescue efforts of scores of volunteers, an official said. The 50-year-old pachyderm called Plai Khun Song was rescued yesterday from a mud hole in a sanctuary in Chanthaburi province, east of Bangkok, but could not stand up due to his lame leg. "He died peacefully at 4am. We will conduct a Buddhist ceremony to pray for him," district chief Viwat Chantanurak said.
2006-07-15 - Chennai, India. Jai Kumar
An orphaned baby elephant found in Tamil Nadus Hosur region, has found a new home at the Vandalur Aringna Anna zoo in Chennai. The baby elephant, which recently lost its mother to an unknown infectious disease was found by villagers who handed it over to local forest rangers. The calf is being fed grass for the time being, Ananth Samy, the director of the zoo, said.
2006-07-15 - Bhubaneswar, India.
The skeleton of a huge tusker that killed two persons before its death in the Chandaka Wildlife Sanctuary near Bhubaneswar is being put up for display at the Regional Museum of Natural History. It appeared that it had suffered pellet wounds which were not healing. Wildlife personnel and vets even tranquilised it in the wild to treat its wounds, but it did not survive and died on May 17.
2006-07-15 - Vancouver Island, Canada. Aaron Bichard
It was the lure of lures that had local Terry Hill snorkeling in the Stoltz Pool waters last month during his holidays. But it was finding a piece of a 22,000-year-old elephant that registered as his catch of the day. Hill took the tusk to the Royal B.C. Museum where curator of archaeology Grant Keddie verified that it was from an elephant, but couldn't say whether it was a mammoth or a mastodon.
2006-07-15 - Seattle, United States. MARY ANDOM
About 80 animal rights activists and community members protested outside a Woodland Park Zoo fundraiser Friday, asking that the 39-year-old Asian elephant Bamboo be moved to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. Protesters young and old stood at the north entrance of the zoo, passing out fliers to donors, holding signs and chanting, "Tell the zoo, to free Bamboo."
2006-07-14 - Shimla, India. Baldev S. Chauhan
A herd of eight elephants entered Himachal Pradesh's Poanta Valley some days ago by crossing the Yamuna from neighbouring Uttaranchal. The animals are now grazing peacefully in the forests of the valley, located in Sirmaur district some 175 km from here. Environmentalists are celebrating the first entry of wild elephants into Himachal Pradesh in several decades, though farmers are a little worried over the guests
2006-07-14 - KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia.
The Wildlife and National Parks Department will improve procedures involving the catching and moving of elephants following the death of a calf elephant and the injury of another under its care recently. Since it was established in 1974, the department's unit to catch and relocate elephants had caught and relocated 342 elephants including 20 calf elephants that got separated from the herd.
2006-07-13 - Seattle, United States. Anne Kim
The asian elephant Bamboo has become the focus of one of the most heated and bitterly debated controversies the Woodland Park Zoo has seen in years. What started as a citizens note of concern has escalated into a letter-writing campaign, public rallies and even a lawsuit accusing the Seattle zoo of harming an endangered species. Zoo officials say the critics are uninformed and using Bamboo as a pawn in a larger debate over whether zoos should keep elephants at all.
2006-07-13 - KHUN SONG, Thailand. APICHART WEERAWONG
An animal medical rescue team succeeded Thursday in hauling a partially lame elephant out of a mud hole in which he was stuck, but the five-ton beast was unable to stand up or be moved further. The medical team, unsure what to do next, decided to construct a care station around the beast, and called for some elephant trainers, or mahouts, to come survey the situation on Friday.
2006-07-12 - New York, United States. Lyashchenko KP, Greenwald R, Esfandiari J, Olsen JH, Ball R, Dumonceaux G, Dunker F, Buckley C, Richard M, Murray S, Payeur JB, Andersen P, Pollock JM, Mikota S, Miller M, Sofranko D, Waters WR.
Tuberculosis (TB) in elephants is a re-emerging zoonotic disease caused primarily by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Current diagnosis relies on trunk wash culture, the only officially recognized test, which has serious limitations. To characterize the humoral responses in elephant TB, we tested 143 serum samples collected from 15 elephants over time. In addition to MAPIA, serum samples were evaluated with a recently developed rapid test (RT) based on lateral flow technology (ElephantTB STAT-PAK). S...
2006-07-12 - Chu Prong, Vietnam.
A herd of about 15 wild elephants, seen for the first time in Central Highlands Gia Lai province, have destroyed 24ha of crops in Ia Pior commune, Chu Prong district since June 30. From 1975 to the 1980s, Vietnam had 2,000 wild elephants; but by 2005, only 150 remained, mainly in the Vietnam-Laos and Vietnam-Cambodia border provinces. An urgent plan of action has been developed to preserve wild elephants, under which three special elephant sanctuaries will be set up, a state report said.
2006-07-11 - Thiruvananthapuram, India.
Is Sethulakshmy pregnant? This is a big question which is bothering the Kerala police after they arrested the owner of the 38-year-old captive elephant. Just last month, Prasanthan Guruji, the previous owner of the elephant, is now cooling his heels in jail. He has been arrested by the Thiruvananthapuram police for torturing his two mahouts. His claims about his elephant being pregnant are also suspect. Prashant claims that the elephant is pregnant. His mahout says it's not.
2006-07-11 - Guruvayur, India.
All the 62 elephants of the famed Sri Krishna temple here will now enjoy a month-long rest from today with the annual restorative treatment for the pachyderms getting underway. "Guruvayur Devaswom is perhaps the only place where such a restorative treatment is given to such a large number of elephants. Over the years, the treatement, sukha chikitsa in Malayalam, has proved to be good not just for their physical vigour but also for mental health," temple authorities said.
2006-07-11 - Riverdale, California, United States.
William McEntee, director of permits and concerns for the Road Commission, said a tooth was used to identify the remains as those of a mastodon and not a mammoth, which also lived in the area. John Zawiskie, geologist for the Cranbrook Institute of Science, said the bones will be taken to Cranbrook, where a scientific study would begin. Zawiskie said mastodons haven't been around in at least 12,000 years, but the discovery isn't as rare as people think."About every summer, something pops up," Za...
2006-07-10 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Claims by international animal rights groups that there is widespread opposition to the export of eight Thai elephants to state-owned zoos in Australia are a “breathtaking exaggeration,” one of the Australian zoo directors said yesterday. Taronga Zoo Director Guy Cooper said the claims were just a publicity stunt and insisted Australian zoos remain committed to elephant conservation.
A senior Thai veterinarian said every elephant in the country should be implanted with a microchip to help protect the troubled pachyderm population. The Bangkok City authority wants to crack down on the hundreds of elephants and their panhandling mahouts who descend on the capital every year. The effort will be quickly abandoned because the authorities will soon despair of dealing with the heavyweight vagrants, predicted Alongkorn Mahannop, a vet sponsored by the Royal Household.
2006-07-10 - TRIVANDRUM, India.
An elephant owner in Kerala, who sold an elephant for a hefty price by feeding a fabricated story to the media, has landed in the police net. Prasanth alias Guruji, who lives on the outskirts of the state’s capital city of Trivandrum, sold the elephant called Sethulakshmi for Rs1.1 million after he planted stories in the media that the animal had become pregnant and would bring big fortune.
2006-07-10 - Cochin, Kerala, India. Juhan Samuel
Caparisons that were once used to adorn elephants during traditional religious processions, now are decoration pieces in homes and offices in Kerala. The huge, three piece ornamental set, consisting of a headgear, an umbrella, decorative fans and a bunch of yak fur is traditionally made of copper and gold, and costs thousands of dollars. Entrepreneurs in Kerala have now devised a way of making the jewellery of High Impact Polymer (HIP), a synthetic organic compound, bringing down the cost ten ti...
2006-07-09 - MUNISING, Michigan, United States. JOHN PEPIN
The Carson and Barnes Circus is in Munising Sunday. Lisa Wathne from PETA, (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wanted to meet with Mayor Rod DesJardins. DesJardins dismissed Wathnes PETA organization as radical extremists with a bizarre philosophy that considers the life of an insect equal to the life of a human being, and he would not dignify the request.
2006-07-09 - Rochester Hills, Michigan, United States. DAN CORTEZ
Excavators in Rochester Hills dug up a bit of Michigans past Friday while building a road for the future. Crews working with the Road Commission for Oakland County unearthed what they think are the remains of a mastodon, a tusked mammal that grazed in the Great Lakes area for thousands of years before becoming extinct 10,000 years ago.
2006-07-09 - Sydney, Australia.
ANIMAL rights activists who jeopardised the transfer of eight Asian elephants to Australia are endangering the elephants' lives, experts say. As zookeepers remained hopeful the elephants would be in Australian zoos by Christmas, Environment Minister Ian Campbell labelled the behaviour of a group of protesters who prevented the importation as "outrageous". And he said yesterday the Federal Government was prepared to launch legal action to ensure the elephants come to Australia.
2006-07-09 - TEMERLOH, Malaysia. SIMON KHOO
Seventeen-month-old elephant Mardos is showing signs of recovering from his fractured legs. Mardos has been eating and sleeping well despite being put on drips and his legs supported by a splint, said Department of Wildlife and National Parks veterinarian Dr Abraham Mathew. Mardos slipped and fractured its legs while being transported with an adult elephant for a show at a school on July 1.
2006-07-09 - Panaji, India.
As Regards to the wild tuskers coming back in Pernem, the deputy conservator of forests, North Goa, Mr S T d’A Henriques said that in case the tuskers reappear the people should keep calm, maintain safe distance and immediately intimate their presence to the forest officials. In a statement he said the wild tuskers having migrated from Karnataka into Maharashtra and then strayed into Goa last year, caused damage to crops including loss of a human life.
2006-07-08 - Sullia, Kerala, India.
A mahout was trampled to death by an elephant at Mittur of Ubaradka near here on Friday July 7. The deceased has been identified as Somanathan (45) of Kerala. He was the mahout of this particular elephant which was brought from Cochin in Kerala. The elephant was summoned from Cochin to pull trees in one Mohan Bhats plantations at Ubaradka.
2006-07-07 - Los Angeles, United States. Dana Bartholomew
A night zookeeper at the Los Angeles Zoo who failed to report that Gita the elephant was resting in a life-threatening position has been allowed to resign. Officials say the woman had learned from a security guard that the 48-year-old elephant was sitting like a dog and failed to report it. The 8,000-pound elephant Gita at the zoo since 1959, had arthritis and a history of chronic foot ailments. She died at 9:40 a.m. after toxins from her muscles led to vascular distress.
2006-07-07 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Vet Alongkorn Mahannop said Friday the government should amend laws to control movement of the animals to prevent them from being exploited by their mahouts, and criticised authorities related to the issue for failing to permanently prevent mahouts and elephants from roaming streets of Bangkok to beg. He estimated over 350 baby elephants have been made to roam streets to beg nationwide, and each year some 175 street elephants were reported injured in Bangkok.
2006-07-07 - Kochi, India.
A two-month old baby elephant which was being washed away in a river has been rescued by tribals and brought to the Elephant Care Centre at Kodanad near Perumbavoor, about 40 km from here. The animal had accidently wandered away from a herd of wild elephants in Nilambur forests and fallen into the river. Senior veterinary surgeon, Dr S Salim, examined the elephant yesterday. She is being fed milk, tender coconuts, glucose and complan, the sources said.
2006-07-07 - Perumbavoor, Kerala, India.
Mr Prakashan (42), a mahout accused of pouring acid into the left eye of an elephant under his care in 1999, has been acquitted by a lower court here, about 40 km from Kochi, for lack of sufficient evidence. Prakashan allegedly poured the acid into the left eye of the tusker, "Arun Kumar", on Oct.15, 1999 fearing that the owner was trying to sell the elephant and that he would lose the job.
2006-07-07 - Calcutta, India. Mamoni Raisom Goswami
My forefathers were the adhikars of the Satra (Vaishnavite monastery) and it was a tradition to keep many elephants, both for work and travelling. We had several elephants and I remember the dhuri (cow) with the single tusk, which my grandmother used to take out for grazing to our backyard. Whenever we visited Amranga, we were given an elephant for joy rides and to play with.
2006-07-07 - QUEENS, New York, United States.
Forest Hills antique dealer Marc Pine, 59, has been charged with illegally selling approximately $15,000 worth of elephant ivory figures and jewelry. Elephants are an endangered species and the sale of more than $1,500 worth of products made from ivory without having first obtained a DEC license or permit is illegal commercialization of wildlife, a Class E felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
2006-07-07 - London, United Kingdom. James Owen, for National Geographic News
The 400,000 year old remains of a massive elephant discovered near London was a male straight tusked elephant, a member of the extinct species Palaeoloxodon antiquus, weighed about 9 tons (9.1 metric tons), twice as large as elephants living today. Workers unearthed the remains in 2004 in the town of Ebbsfleet, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of London, during construction of a new railway line to the Channel Tunnel.
2006-07-07 - Leipzig, Germany. Rompler H, Rohland N, Lalueza-Fox C, Willerslev E, Kuznetsova T, Rabeder G, Bertranpetit J, Schoneberg T, Hofreiter M.. Molecular Biochemistry, Uni Leipzig
By amplifying the melanocortin type 1 receptor from the woolly mammoth, we can report the complete nucleotide sequence of a nuclear-encoded gene from an extinct species. This finding suggests that mammoths may have been polymorphic in coat color, with both dark- and light-haired individuals co-occurring.
2006-07-06 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Officials in the Thai capital Bangkok rolled out big trucks today as they prepared to seize elephants brought in from the countryside to illegally roam the citys streets at night. The crackdown was the latest effort to keep the animals from blocking traffic, as well as to keep them and pedestrians safe as they wander the unfamiliar urban surroundings.
2006-07-06 - Sydney, Australia.
Australian zoos should reconsider their plans to import eight Asian elephants from Thailand, given widespread opposition to the idea, animal welfare groups say. RSPCA Australia, International Fund for Animal Welfare and Humane Society International say they have offered to find a solution that is in the best interests of the elephants.
Australia has postponed the delivery of koalas to Thailand until disputes over the true origins of eight Thai elephants to be sent to that country are settled. Sopon Damnui, director of the Zoological Park Organization, said four koalas were earlier scheduled to arrive in Bangkok yesterday but Australia has postponed the shipment until problems concerning the eight elephants can be solved.
2006-07-06 - Leipzig, Germany. Michael Hopkin
An analysis of 43,000-year-old DNA from these prehistoric creatures suggests that some of them were blondes. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, took samples from a 43,000-year-old bone found in Siberia, and extracted the portion of DNA containing a key pigmentation gene, Mc1r. They publish the results in this week's Science.
2006-07-05 - TAIPEI, Taiwan.
Taiwan custom officials have confiscated more than two tonnes of elephant tusks from Tanzania in what they said could be the largest illegal shipment of ivory uncovered on the island. The ivory, which included 350 tusks and some cut pieces, was discovered in two containers bound for Manila from the eastern African country via Taiwan's southern Kaohsiung harbour, Kuo Shih-hsien, spokesman for Kaohsiung customs told reporters.
2006-07-05 - PITTSFIELD, United States. Patrick G. Rheaume
Audience members were delighted with the performance yesterday by Cole Bros. Circus at Pittsfield Common. But outside, more than a dozen protesters held their applause as well as signs that criticized the treatment of circus animals. Both organizers and protesters were largely concerned with a proposal under consideration in the state Senate that would restrict the chaining of elephants and devices "that may reasonably result in harm to an elephant."
2006-07-05 - Ortonville, Minnesota, United States. CHRISTINA SMITH
Ortonville, located about four miles west of Waukee, was named after Hiram Orton, who moved to the site in 1866. But Ortonville wasn't just any town, it was home to a traveling circus show that started in 1852. Orton purchased nearly 200 acres as the winter headquarters for the circus.
2006-07-05 - Manila, Taiwan. Rich Chang
Kaohsiung Harbor officials yesterday discovered a large amount of ivory in cargo that had originated in Tanzania. The Kaohsiung Customs Office found an estimated 350 tusks in two containers, weighing around 2,500kg and valued at more than NT$100 million (US$3,100,775). "The two containers entered Kaohsiung Harbor on June 11 and June 15, respectively, from Tanzania.
2006-07-05 - Bangkok, Thailand.
World Wildlife Fund Thailand (WWFT) warns Thailand can be boycotted by other countries if it fails to make things clear about the status of eight elephants set to be shipped to an Australian zoo. The shipment has been suspended in the wake of protests by conservation groups which suspect the elephants are not domesticated but are from the wild. They demand the examination of DNA of those elephants but so far no action has been taken.
Kenya and Australia have halted controversial wildlife deals with Thailand amid protests here and abroad. A Nairobi court has put a stop on the Kenyan Government's plan to export animals to Thailand pending the hearing of a case filed by a local non-government group. And Australian zoos have held up delivery of four koalas here after the transfer of eight Thai elephants to the country was blocked by protesters.
2006-07-05 - Nairobi, Kenya. Nancy Akinyi
A Nairobi court has indefinitely put on halt the Governments intended plan to export elephants to Thailand pending the hearing and determination of a case filed by the Nairobi CBO consortium. The NGO opposed the intended move terming it a waste of the countrys few natural resources.
2006-07-05 - Sydney, Australia.
Sydney and Melbourne zoos say legal action will only be taken as a last resort to prevent animal rights activists blocking the delivery of eight Asian elephants to Australia. About 30 activists prevented the elephants leaving a quarantine station near Bangkok in June, claiming the animals would suffer in their new homes at Sydney's Taronga Zoo and Melbourne Zoo.
2006-07-05 - Kochi, India.
The Kerala High Court today dismissed a PIL seeking a probe into the capture and subsequent death of the rogue elephant 'Kolakolli', which had spread terror in the Peppara Wild Life Sanctuary near Thiruvananthapuram last month. The petitioners, People for Animals, Thiruvananthapuram, Wild Life Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, Bangalore, India Projects for Animals and Nature, Tamil Nadu, had sought appropriate action against those responsible, including Chief Wild Life warden and other forest of...
2006-07-04 - Bangkok, Thailand. KULTIDA SAMABUDDHI
Protesters yesterday urged the Australian government to respect the right of Thai people to know the origin of eight Thai elephants being transferred to Australian zoos. About 50 conservationists and students from Kanchanaburi province, where the elephants have been kept, rallied at the Australian embassy in Bangkok to protest the export of the animals to Taronga Zoo in Sydney and Melbourne Zoo.
2006-07-04 - North Wales, United Kingdom. Eryl Crump, Daily Post
Captive Animals' Protection Society (CAPS) last night demanded a boycott of a mid Wales circus starring an elephant. The circus, the only one touring the UK with an elephant, is one of just eight circuses still to use animals. CAPS spokesman Paul Thomas said in addition to using horses, ponies and dogs in its acts, the circus also features an elephant, Anne.
2006-07-04 - Sydney, Australia.
OUR Thai elephants face yet another hurdle on their long, slow journey to Taronga Zoo. Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation want proof the eight Australia-bound elephants are domestic-bred and not wild. They submitted a petition to the Australian Ambassador asking that shipment be suspended on the grounds that the doubts over the pachyderms' geographic origin have yet to be resolved.
2006-07-04 - EREGLI, Turkey.
A 2.5-meter mammoth tooth fossil was unearthed in Eregli town of central city of Konya, said Erksin Gulec, a lecturer at the Anthropology Department of Ankara University. After examining the fossil tooth, predicted to be about 2 million years old, Gulec said that scientists thought that there were swamps and lakes in this region at the age of the mammoths.
2006-07-04 - Hyderabad, India. Gupta SK, Thangaraj K, Singh L. Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad
We have developed a technique based on molecular markers to determine that the carcass is an elephant and that it is a male. Using DNA sequence information from Genbank, we have developed two primer pairs: one for the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the other for the sex-determining region of Y chromosome (SRY) gene of the Indian elephant.
2006-07-03 - Zagreb, Croatia.
Suma, a 45-year-old elephant and long-time resident of the Zagreb Zoo, was bereaved and inconsolable after her pachyderm partner of 10 years died of cancer. Until she heard Mozart. "Suma became very depressed after her roomie Patna died in early May," the head of Zagreb Zoo, Mladen Anic, said.
2006-07-03 - Bangkok, Thailand.
Thailand's National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department on Monday reconfirmed its earlier rejection of requests for DNA testing to verify the demographic status of eight Thai elephants earmarked for Australian zoos, saying it will carry out the export of the pachyderms as planned. The elephants have certificates issued by Interior Ministry to prove they were bred in captivity and did not come from the wild.
2006-07-02 - Bangkok, Thailand.
The Thai non-governmental organization Friends of the Asian Elephant, working to protect elephants plans to petition the Australian embassy in Bangkok Monday, asking for its suspension of importing eight Thai elephants on an exchange programme until it can be proved that the Australia-bound elephants are home-bred, not from the wild.
2006-07-02 - London, Canada. JAMES REANEY
Jumbos myth looms large these days at Museum London. Still, the truth about the big, dead elephant is so elusive that any hunter in pursuit of the pachyderm risks being captured by the game. That is no problem for wily Dundas artist and curator Andrew T. Hunter, who is presenting Jumbos Remains at the museum.
2006-07-02 - Balule, South Africa.
Environmental affairs officials are still hunting for a wounded elephant that was shot at the junction of the tar road between Phalaborwa and Hoedspruit and the road to Gravelotte. The elephant, believed to be a young bull, was shot in the small hours of the morning of June 8, 2006 with a .375 calibre rifle.
2006-07-02 - CONWAY, United States.
Laura Broederdorf of Mountain Home is combining manual labor with in-depth research while working with elephants at Riddle's Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary this summer. Her work involves feeding and cleaning the elephants as well as helping with their medical treatment such as drawing blood and working on their feet. She also walks baby elephants to learn about the management of such large animals.
2006-07-02 - Pahang, Malaysia.
The death of the 18-month-old baby elephant affectionately called Mat Chepor has struck a chord in the heart of many who are puzzled by the whole incident. K. S. USHA DEVI reports. THE death of Mat Chepor, an 18-month-old baby elephant, came as a shock to many people because a day earlier, it had seemed to be in a healthy condition. The orphaned calf, which was found wandering around in the Piah Forest reserve apparently searching for its mother which had been shot by hunters, was in the process...
2006-07-01 - Los Angeles, United States.
The keepers of a 48-year-old Asian elephant that died did not begin emergency procedures for more than eight hours after the animal was discovered in a sitting position, a Los Angeles Zoo investigation has found. Keepers did not begin emergency procedures until the following morning, it said. The 8,000-pound female named Gita died on June 10.
2006-07-01 - BEIJING, China.
Twenty years ago, Xishuangbanna had only 80 wild elephants compared to some 300 today. Last year three villagers were killed by elephants around nature reserves in Xishuangbanna in the southwest province of Yunnan. Crops belonging to 12,000 families were also destroyed. Wildlife officials are planning "dinner halls" of banana plantations and sugarcane planted several kilometres from villages to entice the animals away, So far, 70 ha (170 acres) have been set aside.
2006-07-01 - Lilongwe, Malawi. Charles Mkoka
Patricio Ndadzela, coordinator for African Parks Foundation (APF), confirmed last week that the elephant translocation from the Liwonde National Park to the Majete wildlife reserve will take place. Majete used to have a population of over 300 elephants in the 1980s but they were all wiped out following the influx of firearms and AK 47s in particular from across the border in neighboring Mozambique during the 16 year civil war in the that country.
2006-07-01 - HA NOI, Vietnam.
Three men accused of involvement in a smuggling case involving 276 elephant tusks and 400kg of hawksbill turtle shells were sentenced in a Ha Noi Court yesterday. The smuggling ring was first uncovered by authorities in late 2004.
2006-06-30 - Kanchanaburi, Thailand. PIYAPORN WONGRUANG
The Australian government will speed up the export of eight Thai elephants to Australian zoos, without DNA testing to prove the animals' origin as demanded by conservation groups, an embassy official said yesterday. Australian officials have been preparing a new air freight schedule to transfer the elephants to Taronga Zoo in Sydney and Melbourne Zoo after protests stopped them airlifting the animals earlier this month, said the source.
2006-06-30 - Guwahati, India.
Herds of wild elephants are running amok in Assam, damaging vast swathes of crops and also mud and thatch huts as they move out of their jungles to look for rice beer in human settlement areas in northeastern India. The raids by the pachyderms have resulted in at least five people losing their lives during the past two months.
2006-06-30 - Jaipur, India.
Uttaranchal is seeking trained elephants from Jaipur for its two national parks. The Uttaranchal forest department has made the request to introduce safaris at the Rajaji and Jim Corbett national parks. A Jaipur zoo official told IANS: 'We have informed elephant owners about it and it is for them to decide.'
2006-06-30 - Ranchi, India.
Two women were trampled to death by rampaging elephants on the outskirts of this Jharkhand capital, police said Friday. The incident took place Thursday night when the tuskers attacked six women workers who were returning to their homes in the Angada block, 40 km from here. The elephants immediately returned back to the jungles. Two women died on the spot, while the other four sustained injuries.
2006-06-30 - Shimba Hills, Kenya.
Phase Two of the elephant translocation from Shimba Hills to Tsavo East was planned for January/ February 2006, but has postponed to June/ July this year, due to the dry conditions in Tsavo at the time. Kenya Wildlife Service Kwale Senior Warden Moses Litoroh: "Taking elephants from the relatively green Shimba Hills to Tsavo during the dry season is not advisable as this would make them vulnerable to losses. "Elephants would wander for long distances in search for browse and water ther...
The tuskers attacked six women workers who were returning to their homes in the Angada block. The elephants immediately returned back to the jungles. Two women died on the spot, while the other four got sustained injuries. In the past five years, more than 320 people have been trampled to death by elephants in the state.
2006-06-29 - Bhubaneswar, India.
Officials had found Motilal, a 15-year-old tamed elephant, abandoned on the national highway in the western district of Dhenkanal in Orissa in 2004. Officials brought the animal, which had been left by its mahout, to the Chandaka elephant reserve, using it for patrolling to check poaching and timber smuggling. On June 23, Chilu, its new mahout, attacked it with metal tools used to control elephants. Chilu was allegedly drunk and injured the animal in several places, including its trunk, mouth ...
2006-06-29 - Kent, United Kingdom.
Bones and tusks dating back 400,000 years are the earliest signs in Britain of ancient humans butchering elephants for meat, say archaeologists. Remains of a single adult elephant surrounded by stone tools were found in northwest Kent during work on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Scientists believe hunters used the tools to cut off the meat, after killing the animal with wooden spears.
2006-06-28 - BANGKOK, Thailand.
A Kanchanaburi wildlife conservation group announced that it won't negotiate with the government and waits for the result of DNA testing to verify whether the Australia-bound elephants are home-bred or from the wild. The Kan Conservation Group has blocked the shipment of eight elephants to Australia on the grounds that the elephants may have been captured from the wild and may have difficulties adjusting to life in captivity.
2006-06-28 - Jaipur, India.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, on a 15-day tour of Britain and the US, has promised that the states pachyderms would be properly cared for in an elephant village at Amber near here. Raje made the assurance Tuesday at a charity show organised by Elephant Family, an NGO in London that works for the welfare of Asian elephants, as also in Rajasthan, reports reaching here Wednesday said.
2006-06-28 - Johor, Malaysia. SEE JU VERN
AFTER a bumpy ride from Kahang, Johor, the 24 participants of the One For The Elephant Expedition arrived at the Nature Education and Research Centre (NERC) at Endau Rompin. This part of the trip started off with a boat trip along Sungai Endau to track for elephants. We were taught to read elephants’ footprints we encountered along the banks of the river.
2006-06-28 - Ashanti, Ghana.
Prekesease, a farming community near Anyinofi in the Sekyere East District of the Ashanti region has been plunged into a state of fear as a result of the destructive activities of elephants in the area. The animals are destroying farms and farm produce, causing much panic and indignation among the people.
2006-06-28 - PARIS, France. James Mackenzie
Babar the Elephant, a timeless figure of children's literature, turns 75 this year, his trademark crown and green suit unmarked by changing fashions and criticism that his jungle realm is a relic of colonialism. Babar was created one evening in 1931 when Cecile de Brunhoff, a piano teacher, told her two small sons the story of an elephant whose mother is killed by hunters and who flees to a town where he learns to dress as a human.
2006-06-28 - Berlin, Germany. Reid CE, Hildebrandt TB, Marx N, Hunt M, Thy N, Reynes JM, Schaftenaar W, Fickel J.. Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin
Since 1995, 4 suspected cases of Endotheliotropic Elephant Herpes Virus (EEHV) infection, i.e. based on clinical presentation, have occurred in Asia without resulting in epidemic outbreaks, which brings many of the traditional theories into question. Herpes is still ramped in captive elephant populations worldwide, devastating particularly the neonatal and weaning-age population.
2006-06-27 - London, United Kingdom. By Neil Tweedie
A consignment of elephant dung large enough to fertilise the average suburban garden for a year will be auctioned tonight at a gathering of Britain's Asian business elite attended by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. The dung is expected to raise between £5,000 and £10,000 at a charity "durbar" being held in Richmond, west London, in aid of the Indian elephant.
2006-06-27 - London, United Kingdom. Tom Reed
Toyota has withdrawn a TV spot to be edited after coming under fire for using a 53-year-old arthritic elephant in the ad. The campaign for the Toyota Yaris car, created by Clemmow Hornby Inge, featured an Asian elephant called Anne, the last remaining UK circus elephant, which animal welfare groups claim has been in poor health for many years.
2006-06-27 - Taiping, Malaysia.
Abandoned by the herd after its mother's death, Taiping Zoo came to the rescue of an 18-month-old elephant calf. But while being taken to the zoo, the calf, called Mat Chepor, keeled over and died, soon after being given an antidote. The animal had been sedated before it was taken from the Piah Forest Reserve in Perak, where it had been captured last week by rangers.
2006-06-27 - Lenggong, Malaysia. Shoba Mano
The Remembering Sheena Campaign (RSC) is shocked and distressed over the death of Mat Chepor, the orphaned elephant calf that was found at Kampung Chepor, in Lenggong. The needless death of this elephant calf once again highlights the fact that our Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) officers and others entrusted with the care and protection of wildlife and domestic pets do not have the most basic knowledge to do the job.
2006-06-26 - Chiang Rai, Thailand. TEERAWAT KHAMTHITA
The craze for the animated film Khan Kluay, about the adventures ofa young elephant searching for his father,has led to mahouts bringing more baby elephants onto the streets of Chiang Raiprovince, where they beg for food and money.
2006-06-26 - Washington, United States. Smithsonian Magazine
The worlds biggest land animals can pose a big challenge for zoos. In light of research showing that elephants are social, intelligent creatures which need companionship and room to roam, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association mandated in May that elephant facilities allot at least 1,800 square feet for one elephant outdoors plus 900 square feet for each additional animal.
2006-06-26 - Loango, Gabon. Rhett A. Butler
We are in the rainforest of Loango National Park in the Central African country of Gabon.The five of us - local guides, Patrick and Ghislan; Flip, a veteran safari guide from Zimbabwe; Francesco, a fellow traveler from Italy; and myself - have quietly approached a family of forest elephants: a bull, a cow, and her calf.
2006-06-26 - Ipoh, Malaysia. The Star
IPOH: Mat Chepor, the orphaned 18-month-old elephant who died on Friday while being transported to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Translocation Unit in Pahang, would have been alive if hunters had not shot its mother.
2006-06-25 - Nashville, United States. EAZA
The Nashville Zoo is accepting applications for the position of elephant keeper. The responsibilities of this position include all aspects of the daily husbandry and management of 0.3 African elephants and their facility in a free contact system.
2006-06-24 - Seattle, United States. KATHY MULADY
Woodland Park Zoo officials "vigorously dispute" claims that they are not providing sufficient care for Bamboo, a 39-year-old Asian elephant who grew up at the zoo, was transferred to Tacoma last summer and returned to Seattle this month. Lawyers for Woodland Park Zoo announced Friday that they have filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an animal rights group that claims the elephant should be placed elsewhere.
2006-06-24 - Salt Lake City, United States. Ellen Fagg
Sara Gruen's just-published Water for Elephants, a charming page-turner of a historical novel about a 93-year-old former veterinarian who recalls how he fell in love - with an animal tamer as well as an elephant named Rosie - when he ran away to join a traveling circus during the Depression.
2006-06-24 - Bangkok, Thailand. Connie Levett
OLE, a two-year-old Thai elephant, stands side-on to traffic in the middle of a four-lane street in central Bangkok, trunk swinging erratically as buses, taxis and motorbikes whiz past on either flank. For eight hours each night he walks through choking fumes, stopping only when a customer, Thai or tourist, buys a 20 baht (60 cent) bag of sugarcane to feed him and snap a photo. For the next few months, this will be his life.
2006-06-23 - St. Louis, United States.
The St. Louis Zoo is now expecting two female baby elephants. Tests show that Asian elephant Rani is carrying a female calf. She is due in February. Rani's mother, Ellie, is in the final weeks of her 22-month pregnancy. Zoo officials expect her to deliver a 250-pound female around July 5. She is being monitored 24 hours a day.
2006-06-23 - Santa Barbara, United States. EAZA
The Animal Care Department is seeking a keeper to become an active member of the elephant program team. This position will carry out all basic aspects of the care of the animals, including, but not limited to: training, enrichment, maintenance of exhibits, and the guest experience.
2006-06-23 - Seattle, United States.
Today, attorneys for Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) filed a Motion to Dismiss a lawsuit filed earlier this month by a local animal rights group, Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN), and two private citizens. In its lawsuit, NARN is attempting to force transfer of the zoo’s Asian elephant Bamboo
2006-06-22 - Shashe River, Botswana. Richard Davies
A pact for a new transfrontier game park straddling the borders between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe was signed on Thursday. The environment ministers of the three countries endorsed the agreement in Botswana on the dry bed of the Shashe River. Once proclaimed, the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) will cover 4 872 square kilometres, almost a quarter the size of the Kruger National Park.
2006-06-22 - AYUTTHAYA, Thailand.
It was Man vs. Elephant on a soccer pitch in Thailand on Thursday, as World Cup fever took on a decidedly local flair. Eleven elephants, each one's back painted with different national flags and carrying a rider, faced off against 11 human players for an afternoon designed to convince fans that soccer is about fun and not gambling. Sports gambling is illegal in Thailand but widespread nonetheless.
2006-06-22 - Miami, United States.
Entry level position, responsible for all aspects of daily husbandry, medical procedures, maintenance, and operant conditioning and environmental enrichment with 1.1 Asian and 1.2 African Elephants in a protected contact management system.
2006-06-21 - Los Angeles, United States. Lynn Doan
The director of the Los Angeles Zoo told the Zoo Commission on Tuesday that he was conducting a full investigation into Gita the elephant's recent death, which animal rights activists call premature and blame on mistreatment. Members of the group In Defense of Animals protested outside the commission meeting and demanded that federal officials launch an independent investigation.
2006-06-21 - LENGGONG, Malaysia. CLARA CHOOI
For more than a month, an 18-month-old male elephant had been desperately searching for his mother, not knowing that she had died of gunshot wounds to her head at Kampung Pulau Cheri near here last month. Hungry and alone, the 300kg calf foraged for food and fed on wild banana shoots near the villages where he had last seen his mother.
2006-06-20 - WASHINGTON, United States.
The National Zoo kicked off a $60 million campaign to save the Asian elephant from extinction. Only about 30,000 Asian elephants remain in the entire world, but the National Zoo's three Asian elephants are getting an impressive new habitat. The habitat will include four acres outdoors and a new indoor elephant house that's five times the size of the current elephant house.
2006-06-20 - Virunga, Congo.
Large mammals are recovering after years of decline in the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers said today. Virunga is the most species-rich park in Africa. Civil war and poaching in recent years had reduced the elephant population from 4,300 in the 1960s to just 265 three years ago. In a new census, the population was up to 340.
2006-06-20 - Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
Eight Asian elephants earmarked for Australian zoos are in good condition at a quarantine station in Thailand, but there is still no firm date for their arrival. The elephants remain in quarantine at Kanchanaburi, in western Thailand, after an attempt to transport them to Bangkok Airport on June 6 was blocked by animal rights protesters.
2006-06-19 - Sydney, Australia.
Sydney's Taronga Zoo is appealing for public donations to help fund the upkeep of five Asian elephants being imported from Thailand. The elephants are still in Bangkok, where they have been in quarantine for 18 months, after protesters blocked their move to Australia on June 6. No date has been confirmed for their flight, with Taronga Zoo spokesman Mark Williams quoted in News Limited newspapers as saying the delay had cost the zoo money.
2006-06-19 - Milwaukee, United States.
Lucy, the ailing 46-year-old elephant at the Milwaukee County Zoo, is improving, an official said Monday. The African elephant fell on Friday and had to be lifted back up with a crane.
2006-06-17 - New York, United States. Megan Driscoll
Zoo officials said we will see more of the elephant breeding program for some time to come. Despite recent hardships, zoo representatives said the program will go on. "I think it kind of started out as a little bit of a rumor that the elephant program was suspended at the zoo for a year, which is completely inaccurate. The program is still strong as ever," said zoo spokesperson Sarah Fedele.
2006-06-16 - Kerala, India.
Sethulakshmy, a 38-year-old captive elephant is 18 months pregnant and the talk of Thiruvanantapuram. Owner Prashantan Guruji, who has five elephants, is very nervous. "I am happy but also worried. Even veterinary doctors are not saying anything clearly. So, I am quite concerned and keeping my fingers crossed," said Guruji.
2006-06-15 - SYRACUSE, New York, United States.
An upstate zoo famous for its elephant-breeding program will not be able to breed endangered Asian elephants unless it expands, officials said. Rosamond Gifford Zoo officials in Syracuse told Onondaga County legislators that the zoo will likely need millions of dollars and more land. The zoo will temporarily stop breeding elephants until a decision is made, Zoo Director Chuck Doyle said.
2006-06-14 - Sydney, Australia. Tanya Plibersek
THE OUTCRY about eight endangered Asian elephants from Thailand being offered brand-new, state-of-the art homes in Australian zoos is bizarre, considering the human rights and environmental challenges Thailand faces. Poverty in parts of Thailand has led to a booming sex trade, exploitative working conditions and the environmental destruction that threatens the survival of elephants in the wild.
2006-06-14 - New York, United States. David Spett
With support from animal-rights organizations, Councilmember Rosie Mendez introduced a bill Tuesday to ban wild animal acts from the circus, a move Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey said would force them to stop all of their New York City performances. If passed, the law would ban all wild and exotic animals — including elephants, chimpanzees, tigers and lions — from circuses, carnivals and other live performances in New York City. The law would not affect domesticated animals like cats...
2006-06-14 - Pinnawela, Sri Lanka.
AN elephant named 'Kiri' gave birth on Friday at the Pinnawela to a male calf weighing 75kilo. This was the 36th elephant birth in the orphanage's 31-year history, Veterinary Surgeon Samanthi Mendis said. The Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage was started in 1975 by the Department of Wildlife. The newborn has taken the number of elephants at the orphanage to 76.
2006-06-14 - Casper, United States. LAURIE CREASY
Casper College presents Dee the Mammoth, named for Dee Zimmerschied, the bulldozer operator who found him, a new fossil find about 40 miles north of Casper and what may be one of the largest mammoth fossils around. The center of one of his vertebrae is nine inches in diameter. Compare that with the six-inch center of the largest specimen at South Dakota's Mammoth Site, a 50-year-old male, and you've got one enormous animal. Dee munched his last grass in the Powder River Basin between 10,000 to 2...
2006-06-13 - EAST MANATEE, United States. RICHARD DYMOND
Hugh Schmitt rode on the back of an elephant in a German circus, performed before Nazi soldiers during World War II and ran from Allied bomb blasts in his hometown of Hamburg. Schmitt, who now leads a quiet life on State Road 62 in Parrish with his wife, Louise, was the son of internationally known German animal trainer Hugo Schmitt, who worked for Hamburg's Circus Hagenbeck and later would be called upon by President Dwight Eisenhower to supervise elephants in his inaugural parade in 1953.
2006-06-13 - Denver, United States. Raetta Holdman
With the Denver Zoo's largest fundraiser of the year just days away, the animals are getting in on the fun. Asiatic elephants Dolly and Mimi and a black rhinoceros named Mshindi were hard at work Tuesday painting their masterpieces. Zookeepers said the animals all love painting because picking up sticks is a natural behavior for them and using a paintbrush is just an extension of that behavior.
2006-06-12 - LOS ANGELES, United States.
Animal rights activists have called for the resignation of the director of the Los Angeles Zoo, holding him responsible for the death of a 48-year-old Asian elephant named Gita. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals faxed a letter Sunday to Director John Lewis, saying Gita's death was caused by poor living conditions at the zoo.
2006-06-12 - SEATTLE, United States.
A female Asian elephant, Bamboo, returned yesterday to the 92-acre Woodland Park Zoo. The 39-year-old elephant was transported from Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Wash. in an air conditioned vehicle driven by one of the nation’s most highly regarded animal movers. Zoo veterinarians and zookeepers accompanied her on the short trip to Seattle.
2006-06-11 - Los Angeles, United States. Carla Hall
Gita, the Los Angeles Zoo's female Asian elephant who had become the focus of a highprofile controversy over whether the giant animals should stay in zoos, died Saturday morning in her yard after several hours of attempts to save her life. Gita, who turned 48 this month, had lived at the zoo since 1959.
2006-06-11 - Lampang, Thailand. Soraida Salwala, Friends of the Asian Elephant, FAE's Elephant Hospital
Mogae-Grey, a thirty-year-old cow was hired to haul logs across the Thai border. She walked with her baby alongside her when the baby stepped on a landmine. Her injuries are quite severe.
2006-06-09 - Syracuse, New York, United States. MICHELLE YORK
She had been in labor since Sunday, but the contractions remained weak. So on Wednesday night, experts from Missouri and Florida flew to Syracuse to assist in a rare emergency surgery on the 29-year-old patient - an Asian elephant named Romani. An eight-member team gathered on Thursday morning to perform the procedure, similar in concept to an episiotomy in human births but much rarer - with only an estimated seven previously performed in the world, a zoo spokeswoman said. Employe...
2006-06-09 - Manila, Philippines. Blanche S. Rivera
THE IVORY tusks seized last year in the Philippines account for the biggest shipment of smuggled elephant tusks being investigated by the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), an international team monitoring the illegal trade of African wildlife all over the world. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said the total 6,758 kilograms of tusks seized at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in September and the South Harbor in November last year were 200 kilograms more than th...
2006-06-09 - Abington, United States. Max Bowen
After a two-year hiatus, Jewel and Tina are packing their trunks and heading back to Abington. The decision to bring back the two elephants is part of the Cole Bros. Circus continuous goal to make each years performance fresh and new, according to Renne Storey, vice president of administration for the circus. Since the elephants were removed from the roster in 2004, the circus has received much feedback from patrons who wanted them to come back."People were saying they really missed the ele...
2006-06-09 - Gaborone, Botswana.
Residents of Mmadinare village are still reeling in shock after an incident in which an elephant trampled to death, a 76 year old man on Wednesday in Sasau cattle posts. The deceased had gone to the cattle posts to round up his cattle for Foot and Mouth vaccination when he met his fate. The deceased is reported to have left his home last Tuesday with his children to assess the damage that the elephants had caused to his farm after having heard their noises when they invaded the farm the previous...
2006-06-09 - Shanghai, China.
A 46-year-old animal keeper was killed accidentally by an elephant in a safari park in Shanghai, east China, on Thursday, sources with the safari park confirmed on Friday. Li Guohua, the animal keeper, was suddenly thrown away by an Asian elephant using its trunk when he was helping veterinarians to treat this ill elephant at about 8:00 p.m. Thursday.
2006-06-08 - Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
Animal rights protesters who blocked the transfer of eight Asian elephants from Thailand to Australia placed the animals under "horrific stress," Environment Minister Ian Campbell said yesterday. He said it could be some weeks before the animals are brought to Australia. A group of protesters stopped trucks carrying the elephants from leaving a quarantine station in the western Thai province of Kanchanaburi late Monday, bound for Bangkok's airport.
2006-06-08 - Lusaka, Zambia. Angel Tabe
Roaming elephants in Zambia are said to be destroying food crops, property and even human lives. The countrys wildlife authorities say they are working to resolve the problems, but villagers blame the continuing rampage on what they see as the governments reluctance to take action.
2006-06-08 - Central Florida, United States. Tammy L. Carter
Mary has lived a full life. She worked with a circus in the 1950s, retired to Dallas, lived in New York and moved to Central Florida in 1983. She enjoys taking baths and eating sugar cane. She has shared housing with her best friend, Maude, for about 23 years. That's good for an Asian elephant that just turned 60. If Mary is in good health and in good spirits, why does anyone want to shake up her world?
2006-06-07 - Lake Monroe, FL, United States.
The Central Florida Zoological Park is looking for a team oriented keeper to join the Hoofstock Department in an entry level position. Responsibilites include animal husbandry, enrichment, training and exhibit maintenance for 0.2 Asian elephants (free contact), red kangaroos and emus, and domestic animals in a childern's zoo setting.
2006-06-07 - Conway, United States. Schulte BA, Rasmussen LE. Department of Chemistry, Hendrix College, Conway, AR
Using automated solid-phase dynamic extraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, our search for urinary chemical signals from ovulatory female African elephants (Loxodonta africana) has revealed the bark beetle aggregation pheromones frontalin, exo-brevicomin, and endo-brevicomin, as well as their precursors and the aphid alarm pheromones (E,E)-alpha-farnesene and (E)-beta-farnesene.
2006-06-06 - Kampala, Uganda. Charles Akena
OVER 100 people in Kamdini village have given up poaching wild game and handed over an assortment of hunting implements to the authorities. A delegation of 245 poachers led by Mr Patrick Odongo handed over spears, traps, wire snares, cooking pots and other tools to the Senior Conservation Officer of Murchison National Park, Mr Stonewall Kato, at Kamdini Parish last week. They revealed that they used to hunt animals in the park and later sell the meat to hotel proprietors in Kampala and other are...
2006-06-06 - Manila, Philippines. Joel E. Zurbano
A special team of agents will be tasked to investigate pilferages of cargoes and other irregularities at Customs warehouses. The Bureau of Customs made the move after a shipment of elephant tusks worth P50 million seized at the Port of Manila disappeared in the custody of the Asian Terminals Inc. at South Harbor.
2006-06-06 - Dallas, United States.
This position will supervise a section with elephants, giraffes, carnivores and mixed mammals with 7+ keepers. Must be proficient in Protected Contact training and will participate in design of new and large naturalistic exhibits for elephants, giraffe, lions, etc.
2006-06-03 - NEW YORK, United States.
The Asian elephants used in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus are at the heart of perhaps the most bitter animal-care fight around, one that's dragged through court for six years already and is inching toward a trial, America's biggest circus against some of the most influential animal-welfare groups. Ringling insists that its elephants receive state-of-the-art treatment and it's determined to keep them in its cast.
2006-06-03 - NEW YORK, United States. DAVID CRARY
With their colorful headgear and repertoire of tricks, they're top-billed stars of The Greatest Show on Earth. But away from the arena, the Asian elephants used in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus are at the heart of perhaps the most bitter animal-care fight around, one that's dragged through court for six years already and is inching toward a trial. It's a heavyweight bout, pitting America's biggest circus against some of the most influential animal-welfare groups. Ringling insists...
2006-06-01 - LOUISVILLE, United States.
The Louisville Zoo is expecting a new attraction come next spring. Mikki, a 20-year-old African elephant, is pregnant by artificial insemination. Zoo officials have not determined the 150-to 200-pound calf's gender and believe the insemination last June did the trick. "We've been working on this for years," said Zoo Director John Walczak. This was the zoo's second try at artificial insemination. The zoo verified Mikki's pregnancy by sonogram last November.
2006-05-31 - Murchison, Texas, United States. EAZA
The majestic Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison, Texas is in need of an Elephant Keeper to maintain responsibility for total care of elephant(s) residing at the Ranch, to include providing proper and clean environment(s), food preparation and feeding, supplies maintenance, enrichment provisions and strategiesmedical care and training.
2006-05-29 - Thiruvananthapuram, India. JOHN MARY
When forest officers failed to catch a rogue elephant, some tribals decided to hold them captive. Officials from Kerala and Tamil Nadu were locked inside a building in the Peppara forest range, around 50 km from here, for nearly three hours today by the group that included women and children. They demanded immediate capture of the elephant that has killed their kin and eaten their crops.
2006-05-29 - Cambridge, United Kingdom. Allen WR. Dep. of Vet.Med. Equine Fertility Unit, Univ. of Cambridge, Suffolk
The African elephant reproduces so efficiently in the wild that overpopulation is now a serious problem in some game parks in Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. The female reaches puberty between 10 and 12 years of age in the wild and, when in captivity, shows oestrous cycles of 14-15 weeks duration. She readily conceives a singleton in the wild yet her uterus has the capacity for twins. She shows a gestation length of 22 months and, in the wild, shows a population density and feed dependent i...
2006-05-29 - Lampang, Thailand. Soraida Salwala, Friends of the Asian Elephant. FAE's Elephant Hospital
Manguay-low, who shared tragic injuries from landmines in 2003, collapsed Tuesday 23rd May at 5.30. We tried to help her get up but she had lost all her strength. I had to decide to let her go peacefully
2006-05-29 - New Delhi, India.
The Wildlife SOS Elephant Welfare Project in India has just launched a new street elephant rescue programme. Illegally caught captive elephants in India are estimated to number more than 5000. Delhi is one of the most populated and polluted cities in the world, where 40 of these elephants are subjected to terrible living and "working" conditions.
2006-05-28 - Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. EAZA
The Knoxville Zoo is looking for an experienced, motivated, team oriented individual who wants to work elephants. We work both free and protected contact with 1.3 African Elephants. The program is early in its building phase with the ultimate goal of breeding within the next year. There are promotional opportunities available within the elephant team.
2006-05-25 - Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nazrul Islam
Marauding elephants have trampled down three people in Bangladesh's south-eastern Banderban and Cox's Bazar districts while a crocodile has taken away one fisherman from southern Sundarbans on Thursday and Tuesday, according to sources in the district administrations.
2006-05-25 - Baringo, Kenya. Alex Kiprotich
Two people were on Wednesday morning killed by a stray elephant in Kapluk centre, Baringo District. The elephant, which is believed to be from Lake Kamnarok Game Reserve, wreaked havoc in the villages around Kapluk and caused panic among the residents. Baringo police boss, Peter Njenga, who led a security team to comb the area, confirmed the dead as David Sumukwo, 40, and David Samoei.
2006-05-24 - Pahang, Malaysia. DEBBIE CHAN
CONTINUING their fight for elephants, APES (Awareness and Preservation of Elephants) and The Star BRATs (Bright, Roving, Annoying Teens) have decided to adopt a baby from the Kuala Gandar Elephant Sanctuary in Pahang. APES is excited about working with the young journalists again in spreading awareness on elephant conservation, APES spokesman Chwen Zheng.
2006-05-21 - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India.
The man-animal conflict in the Agasthyar forests has entered its climactic phase. After weeks of indecision, the government has decided to set up an elaborate trap to capture the wild elephants that are creating havoc in the 27 kani settlements spread deep inside the forests.
2006-05-21 - Guwahati, India. Utpal Borpujari
A Supreme court ban on logging has led to the problem of elephants and their mahouts in Assam having to pace the streets, begging for a living. Mrinal Talukdar’s film focuses on this issue. A small film on a jumbo problem is Assam is creating waves. In Search of a Job, a 14-minute film by an Assamese journalist on the heart-rending issue problem of domesticated elephants begging on the streets after being made “jobless†due to the Supreme Court ban on logging brought under foc...
2006-05-20 - Los Angeles, United States. PERRY CROWE
On April 19, the L.A. City Council approved a nearly $40 million expansion of the L.A. Zoos elephant exhibit. The plan includes waterfalls and bathing holes and lush greenery spread over 3.7 acres. Its definitely a step up from the current 2-acre exhibit, which is broken into two small enclosures, one of which is Billys daytime home. And the size of the elephant barn in the citys expansion plan suggests an eventual population of 10 elephants as L.A.s elephants become a breeding herd, with Billy ...
2006-05-20 - Beitbridge, Zimbabwe.
Police in Beitbridge have arrested two South African immigration officials and a Zimbabwean for attempting to smuggle 100 pieces of ivory and 400 bricks of cigarettes worth several billions of dollars. A South African Home Affairs Ministry official truck was used to smuggle the contraband. Following interception of the truck, the police arrested two South African immigration officers and a Zimbabwean for allegedly conniving to smuggle the contraband through Beitbridge using the official truck.
2006-05-19 - Anchorage, Alaska, United States. Blake de Pastino
You can lead an elephant to a treadmill, but you can't make her walk. That's the lesson zookeepers are learning in Anchorage, Alaska, where they have been struggling to get the zoo's resident elephant to exercise. Maggie, a 23-year-old African elephant (pictured here on May 16), is the only pachyderm at the Alaska Zoo, where she is kept indoors much of the time to protect her from the cold.
2006-05-19 - Dak Lak, Vietnam.
With bears now micro-chipped to protect them after release, elephants are being sized up for a similar program. The Prime Minister has approved a plan the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Forest Protection Department devised to micro-chip elephants as a measure to protect their dwindling numbers.
2006-05-19 - Windhoek, Namibia. Christof Maletsky
THE community of Ozondjorukwena farm, 42 km west of Kalkfeld, say they live in fear because of roaming elephants that destroy their fences and water points. On Wednesday, seven elephants were spotted 800 metres from the homesteads while moving in a northern direction after destroying fences and water points.
2006-05-19 - LAKELAND, Florida, United States.
The center was funded by the Ringling Brothers Circus 1995. It serves as a place for their older elephants to retire or, start a family. It is the most diverse gene pool in North America, and the only self-sustaining elephant herd in North America. Some of the elephants born at the center will follow in their parents' footsteps and join the circus.
2006-05-18 - COLOMBO, Sri Lanka.
Some of Sri Lanka's wildest, most destructive elephants will be getting a reprieve despite their bad behaviour - but they'll have to spend some time in rehab first. Elephants that rampage through villages, destroying crops or killing people, will be caught, tamed and put to work in the conservation department, an official said Thursday.
2006-05-17 - Seattle, United States.
Seattle's elephants receive great care, but that's not enough. They deserve more space. A controversy over the future of one of the zoo's elephants, Bamboo, provides a window into the questions Seattle's political leadership needs to face at Woodland Park Zoo. Amid a host of zoo changes, city government has paid far too little attention to how well the planet's largest land animals may fit there for the long term. In the 1980s (with help from a Seattle P-I campaign), the zoo built a new elephant...
2006-05-17 - Auckland, New Zealand.
Leading television network Animal Planet, in conjunction with SKY TV, today announced the sponsorship of the Animal Planet Elephant Clearing at Auckland Zoo, New Zealand. Home to Asian elephants Kashin and Burma, two of the zoos most popular residents, Animal Planet will support the internationally recognised elephant management program at New Zealand�s largest zoo as part of the networks ongoing commitment to assist ethical zoos across Australia and New Zealand.
2006-05-17 - Toronto, Canada.
Michael Hackenberger, director and part owner of the Bowmanville Zoo were acquitted Wednesday on a charge of breaking a Toronto bylaw by having two elephants appear at a fundraiser in October. Had he been convicted of having prohibited animals within city boundaries, Hackenberger could have faced a fine of $10,000 per elephant or six months in jail. "We're just delighted with the decision," said Hackenberger, just after Justice of the Peace Kevin Madigan ruled for their acquittal at the Toronto ...
2006-05-17 - Kigali, Rwanda.
Mutware, the famous elephant in Akagera National Park, is on the rampage. It escaped from the park recently and is now destroying properties and gardens around Nasho Sector in Kirehe District. Residents are also in constant fear for their dear lives. Those talked to Monday May15, say that many people have abandoned their daily work and homes in fear of being attacked by the elephant.
2006-05-14 - Nairobi, Kenya. Philip Mwakio
The historic elephant translocation exercise that was stopped last December is expected to resume in July. The exercise, billed the largest ever in the world, seeks to move 400 elephants from the Shimba Hills National Reserve to Tsavo East National Park. The second phase of the translocation exercise hopes to move 250 jumbos. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Head of Elephant programmes, Mr Patrick Omondi, told The Sunday Standard that plans were still on for the exercise.
2006-05-14 - Tesso Nilo, Indonesia. WWF
On 14 May eight endangered Sumatran elephants were released into Tesso Nilo National Park, seven weeks after they were found chained to trees without food or water in central Riau, Indonesia. Local forestry officials had captured the elephants after they had damaged crops and homes near Libo Forest. WWF, which provided daily care and medical treatment for the elephants after their discovery, accompanied the authorities as they released the elephants to ensure that the release was done safely.
2006-05-13 - Rotterdam, Netherlands. Mafootje
On may 13 at 11:30 a female elephant was born in Rotterdam. She was up on her feet in 3 minutes and was born in between the elephant group. For the mother Douanita this is the first living young she has had, but it's the tenth birth of an elephant in this Rotterdam Zoo. The elephant is named Trong Nhi after a famous Vietnamese female leader.
2006-05-12 - COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh.
One child was killed and 30 people were injured on Thursday when two wild elephants wrecked parts of a refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, police said. They said the elephants strayed into the camp for Myanmar Muslim refugees from the nearby forest and destroyed dozens of bamboo shelters. Police fired blank shots to chase the elephants back to the forest from the camp that houses 8,000 Muslim refugees, who are among the tens of thousands who crossed into Bangladesh more than a decade ago al...
2006-05-11 - San Diego, United States.
Keepers at the San Diego Zoos Wild Animal Park have seen the heartbeat, ribs and vertebrate of an African elephant fetus through ultrasound. Umgani is expected to give birth sometime around August to her first calf, after a 21-month gestation period. This will be the first calf Mabhulane, the Wild Animal Parks adult male, has sired.
2006-05-10 - Stockholm, Sweden.
Motorists approaching the Swedish capital on Tuesday were met with the unlikely sight of three elephants grazing by the freeway. Swedish radio reported on Wednesday that the elephants had escaped from a circus van, towed by a lorry which had overturned on a sharp bend just north of the capital. The animals had dispersed across the field, reported the radio.
2006-05-10 - Hong Kong, China.
Elephant tusks smuggled in a shipping container have been seized by customs officials in Hong Kong. The 3.9 tonnes of tusks from Cameroon, worth about 8 million Hong Kong dollars (about €805,500), were the largest such seizure “in recent years,” Hong Kong Customs said in a statement. Officials couldn’t say when the last big seizure was. Officers found the tusks in a concealed compartment in a shipping container that was declared to be carrying timber from the West African nation of Camer...
2006-05-08 - Buea, Cameroon. Pegue Manga
Dr. Michael Loomis, a Veterinarian working for the North Carolina Zoological Park, has been working with the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF and Cameroon's Ministry of Environment, tagging elephants for nine years now. Loomis, 56, in this exclusive interview with The Post, explains what elephant tagging entails, its importance and how it can help the government fashion policy decisions on conservation. The Veterinarian, however, regrets that, in spite of efforts to check elephant poaching, this ...
2006-05-08 - Arusha, Tanzania. Arusha Times
Some elephants are reported to have been killed by gangs of people, believed to be 'commercial' poachers. According to village sources they have of late set up their camps within the Sinya forest of the new Longido district, a former precinct of Monduli but anti-poaching authorities have denied the reports. The Sinya village chairman, Mbakuli Ole Nasiang'a said that ten giant jumbos have been gunned down by a well organized gang of ivory poachers who use automatic fire weapons and rifles. Accord...
2006-05-08 - Auckland, New Zealand.
New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where people can have breakfast with elephants. Several Aucklanders were given the opportunity to breakfast in the enclosure of Auckland Zoo's Asian elephants Kashin and Burma at the weekend. The proceeds from the event will go towards helping senior zookeeper Andrew Coers attend a conference in America, where he will talk about the Auckland elephant programme. Mr Coers says the free-contact programme run at Auckland Zoo is unique. He says at ...
2006-05-08 - London, United Kingdom. Malcolm Moore
The co-founder of the Italian Blumarine fashion house has been trampled to death by an elephant while on a hunting trip in Zimbabwe, Italian media reported yesterday. Gianpaolo Tarabini, 67, was on safari with Claudio Chiarelli, a professional hunter, and Aldo Castoldi, a photographer, when they were charged by two elephants. His two friends escaped. Mr Tarabini co-founded Blumarine with his wife, the fashion designer Anna Molinari in 1977.
2006-05-07 - Thrissur, India.
Kerala is celebrating Thrissur Pooram on Sunday. It is one of the biggest temple festivals in the state. The two-century-old festival is also known as Thrissur Pooram named after the place where it is held. Pooram is marked by a spectacular procession of elephants and percussion performances called panja-vadiam. Close to 200 artists will take part in the festival this year.
2006-05-06 - Durban, South Africa. LEW ELIAS
ELEPHANTS are set to become a part of the East London private game reserve at Inkwenkwezi after nature conservation authorities gave it permission to let the public take walks with the pachyderms. The approval is subject to the reserve building suitable accommodation and providing for their needs such as adequate facilities for food and water, reserve owner Graham Stanton said yesterday.
2006-05-05 - SYRACUSE, New York, United States.
The Rosamond Gifford Zoo plans to loan two of its Asian elephants to a Canadian wildlife park. Targa, 22, and her daughter, Mali, 9, will be transported early next week by tractor-trailer to African Lion Safari in Cambridge, Ontario which currently boasts the continent's most prolific Asian elephant breeding program.
2006-05-04 - Siavonga, Zambia.
Zambia Wildlife Authority, ZAWA, has shot dead two Elephants which have been terrorising villagers in the area. The move by ZAWA to kill the jumbos is an effort to control the beasts that have been a menace to the villagers. And Siavonga district commissioner, DC, Emily Striedl has said ZAWA will not manage to effectively control the big population of elephants in the district if adequate transport is not provided to them.
2006-05-04 - Santa Barbara, United States. Chris Wilcox
Elephants in the Santa Barbara Zoo may soon have to pack their trunks and move, pending an upcoming decision by the California State Legislature. On April 25, a California Assembly committee passed the Elephant Protection Act, which will go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for approval May 10. The bill, CA AB 3027, would require California’s zoos to expand their elephant enclosures to at least five acres and to stop using certain elephant handling tools, or risk losing their eleph...
2006-05-04 - Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Wild Life Department sources reveal that the number of deaths in human-elephant conflicts in Sri Lanka has increased rapidly. Today an average of 150 elephants are killed annually by people, while the elephants kill an average of around 40 people per year. These averages rose from 50 elephant deaths and 12 human deaths per year at the end of the 1980s.
2006-05-02 - Hanoi, Vietnam.
Just 76 wild elephants roam in Vietnam now, and scientists warn that if harsh measures are not taken, Vietnamese forests will have none of the beasts within 30 years. From 1975-1980, Vietnam had an estimated herd of 1,500-2,000 wild elephants, living in various regions of the country. These majestic beasts contributed not only to human endeavours, but to the biodiversity of Vietnam’s natural environment. Since 1980, the number of wild elephants has fallen rapidly as thousands of hectares of fo...
2006-05-01 - ARUSHA, Tanzania.
On April 17th, 2006 Mr. Emmanuel Muyengi, District Game Officer of Simanjiro District in northern Tanzania, was shot by poachers and died. Mr. Muyengi was leading a raid on elephant poachers in Simanjiro on April 16th. The poachers were reportedly in possession of two vehicles, elephant tusks, firearms and ammunition. In the course of apprehending the poaching gang, Mr. Muyengi was targeted and shot in the leg. The poachers used the ensuing confusion during the shoot-out to escape on foot into t...
2006-04-29 - Bhubaneswar, India. The Hindu
The Orissa Government has turned a `mute spectator' to the unabated poaching of tuskers in the State for illegal ivory trade, Wildlife Society of Orissa (WSO) secretary Biswajit Mohanty said on Friday. He claimed that in the last 12 months as many as 14 elephants were killed in Orissa's forests. In April alone two elephants were shot dead, one at Chandaka and the other at Satkoshia Wildlife Sanctuaries, both considered as the ideal habitat for elephants in Orissa.
2006-04-27 - Rochester, New York, United States.
The next time you go to the zoo there's a new exhibit to check out. Rochester's African elephants, Genny C and Lilac, now have a new place to call home. On Thursday Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks and the zoo SpokesKids cut the ribbon for the opening of the new African elephant exhibit. “I think the elephants will love it hear and have a happy home just like in the wild,” said Seneca Park Zoo SpokesKid Jacob Reynolds.
2006-04-24 - Cape Town, South Africa.
Six young wild elephants were forcibly removed from their herd last week and condemned to lives of abuse as safari elephants - with the full approval of South Africa's conservation authorities. The elephants have been taken to the training facility of Elephants For Africa Forever (EFAF), a centre which notoriously supplies "tamed and trained" elephants to elephant-back safari tourism operations throughout South Africa.
2006-04-18 - Asmara, Eritrea. Shoshani J, Kupsky WJ, Marchant GH. Department of Biology, University of Asmara
We report morphological data on brains of four African, Loxodonta africana, and three Asian elephants, Elephas maximus, and compare findings to literature. Brains exhibit a gyral pattern more complex and with more numerous gyri than in primates, humans included, and in carnivores, but less complex than in cetaceans.
2006-04-17 - Pekanbaru, Indonesia.
Environmentalists have urged the Indonesian Government to investigate irregularities in elephant catching procedures which have caused a number of elephants had died in the past few years.According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, the Riau Administration had caught 201 wild elephants since 2000, and at least 46 of the animals had been killed due to inappropriate procedures in relocating them, Media Indonesia daily reported here on Monday.
2006-04-06 - Vienna, Virginia, United States.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation® (CEC) proudly announced today the birth of a healthy female Asian elephant – marking the twentieth birth in what is already one of the most successful Asian elephant breeding programs. The calf, born on April 6, 2006, 9:08 p.m. at 295 pounds, is a rare second-generation offspring of eleven-year-old Shirley and thirteen-year-old Romeo, who were also born into the Ringling Bros.® conservation program.
Today, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® announced that it will fund a reproductive research study conducted by scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park. The $135,000 commitment will be distributed over the next three years in support of the National Zoo’s efforts to increase the captive population of the endangered Asian elephant.
2006-04-06 - Orlando, Florida, United States.
Save The Elephants (STE) announced today that founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Ph.D. was honored by the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund as a leading wildlife advocate for his work to preserve endangered animals. Douglas-Hamilton was one of five conservationists receiving this Disney honor. The others include international actress and model Isabella Rossellini, Dr. Jane Goodall, actor John Cleese and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai.
2006-04-05 - Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Vin Diesel has chosen the Dominican Republic as a location for his movie Hannibal, an epic about the 3rd century conqueror who led an army riding elephants across the Alps in an assault on Rome. Diesel plans to direct and star in the title role of the film based on British author Ross Leckie's fictionalized memoir of the Carthaginian leader.
2006-04-05 - Cooch Behar, India.
A herd of wild elephants damaged 17 houses in areas adjacent to Kadambini Tea Estate and Kunjanagar Eco-Park in Dooars area of West Bengal, a senior Forest official said today. Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Cooch Behar, M N Biswas said that wild elephants came from Jaldapara wildlife sanctuary and ransacked 17 houses on Tuesday night.
2006-04-05 - Luanda, Angola.
Doubling of volume over a year shows serious rise in elephant poaching. War-battered Angola itself has only about 250 elephants. Elephant populations elsewhere are on the rise -- in part because of an almost complete global ban on the ivory trade. The World Conservation Union says elephant numbers in east and south Africa are rising. It says surveys showed elephant numbers in the two regions rose to 355,000 from 283,000 in the five years to 2002, a growth rate of 4.5 percent per year.
2006-04-04 - Yangon, Myanmar.
Elephants that once roamed the mangrove swamps of Myanmar's vast Ayeyarwaddy Delta are headed for extinction, with only two of its kind still alive, a local newspaper said Monday. The two survivors live in the delta's Meinmahla island wildlife sanctuary about 130km south-west of Yangon, the Flower News weekly newspaper said.
2006-03-31 - Sauraha, CHITWAN, Nepal.
Is there an alternative way to train a domestic elephant to learn faster, be more obedient and decrease a risk to people? The answer is yes, according to the ‘positive reinforcement’ training being discussed and demonstrated at the Elephant Breeding Center at Sauraha,Royal Chitwan National Park. The first phase of the training concludes on 5 April 2006. Based on the outcome of this training, a follow-up session will be scheduled. Finland has been supporting conservation efforts in Nepal for ...
2006-03-30 - Moscow, Russian Federation. Vinogradov IV, Kochneva GV, Shchelkunov SN, Riabchikova EI.
Electron microscopy was used to study the reproduction of cowpox virus strain EP-2 from elephant in the cells of a primary fibroblast cultures (PFC) and chorion-allantoic membrane (CAM) of chick embryos (CE).
2006-03-27 - Hoedspruit, South Africa. Zinkie Sithole
The fate of a "tame" elephant has yet to be decided, three weeks after she trampled her handler Edias Makore to death when he used a prodder on her. Master elephant trainer Paul Coetzee said: "I have not made a final decision about her fate, but for now we have isolated the elephant and will not use her for future rides."
2006-03-24 - Letaba, South Africa.
The Elephant Hall at Letaba Main Camp in the Kruger National Park (KNP) reopened today. The museum covers elephant evolution, biology, behaviour, ecology and research. It also showcases the ivory of eight of Kruger's greatest tuskers include a full-size elephant skeleton and the impressive tusks of Mandleve.
2006-03-23 - Copenhagen, Denmark.
There must be something in the water at the Copenhagen Zoo - at least in the elephant house. The 11th elephant born in captivity in the zoo came to the world on Monday, at precisely 21.40. Copenhagen Zoo's 11 elephant births are among the most of any zoo, officials stated on Tuesday. The newest addition to the flock is a healthy, 130kg calf who, with a little help from his mother, Ida, was on his feet less than 10 minutes after being born.
2006-03-22 - Brighton, United Kingdom. McComb K, Baker L, C. Moss, University of Sussex School of Life Sciences
Here, we use systematic presentations of object arrays to demonstrate that African elephants show higher levels of interest in elephant skulls and ivory than in natural objects or the skulls of other large terrestrial mammals. However, they do not appear to specifically select the skulls of their own relatives for investigation so that visits to dead relatives probably result from a more general attraction to elephant remains.
2006-03-06 - Hoedspruit, South Africa.
The Zimbabwean elephant trainer Elias Makori has died after being trampled by an elephant at Jabulani Camp near the Kruger National Park on Monday morning. Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe, Limpopo police spokesperson for the Mopane district, said the trainer had been trying to herd an elephant that had strayed from a herd back towards the others when it attacked him at the camp in Hoedspruit.
2006-03-06 - SAKHIGOPAL, India. Prafulla Das
A wild elephant, which was caught and chained after it strayed into Biraramachandrapur village in Orissa, is under severe stress. With the authorities clueless on how to handle the pachyderm, its return to the forest seems difficult. The 30-year-old tusker covered about 60 km from the Chandaka forest, near Bhubaneswar, crossing several villages, before straying into Sakhigopal.
2006-03-03 - WACO, Texas, United States.
A 25-year-old woman climbed past barriers and into an elephant's zoo exhibit, then crawled out with minor injuries after the 6,000-pound animal smacked her with its trunk. "That's how an elephant reacts to something they would perceive as a threat," said Cameron Park Zoo director Jim Fleshman. After saying she wanted to play with the elephant, the woman climbed over a 3-feet-high wood-and-wire fence, scaled an 8-foot-tall artificial rock structure and bypassed an electric wire before jumping int...
2006-03-03 - Washington, United States. National Zoo Press Release
Continuing two decades of elephant conservation and research, Smithsonian’s National Zoo elephant experts and a team of German veterinary scientists last night completed the first of what may be two artificial insemination procedures on Shanthi, one of the Zoo’s Asian elephants. Shanthi is approximately 30 years old, and is the mother of Kandula, the Zoo’s four-year-old male, who was conceived by artificial insemination conducted by the same team of scientists in February 2000.
2006-03-02 - Jakarta, Indonesia.
Six wild Sumatran elephants found dead with blackened mouths on the jungle floor of Mahato, Riau province, on Indonesia's Sumatra island, were believed to have been poisoned, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) official said on Thursday. "We have a strong belief that they were all poisoned," Desmarita Murni, WWF communications officer for species programmes, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, adding that the WWF planned to perform an autopsy later on Thursday to find out exact details on how and who migh...
2006-03-01 - PURI, India.
Wild elephants killed two persons and injured one today in Biraramachandrapur village near Sakhigopal. They were heading for the paddy fields. To their shock, they found two elephants moving in the area and ran for cover. Two of them stumbled and fell as the agitated elephants advanced towards them. Bulu Bhoi and Buddhia were killed as they stumbled and fell and the animals trampled them.
2006-03-01 - Livingstone, Zambia.
One of the two elephants that killed three people in southern Zambia has been shot dead by officers of Zambia Wildlife Authority. ZAWA PR officer Maureen Mwape said it is important to kill elephants that kills human beings because they will continue killing people.
2006-03-01 - New York, United States.
Why do you have to walk through the Midtown Tunnel? Our circus train is too long and we are allowed to take up only so many feet of commuter train track. We would take up so many of the tracks that it just wouldn’t work out. How long is the trek? It’s about two and a half to three miles. The elephants already walk three miles daily to keep in shape, so this is no problem. Our oldest elephant, Mysore, is 58 years old, so even though she gets her daily exercise, we’ll d...
2006-02-25 - Edinburgh, United Kingdom. CLAIRE SMITH
ANIMAL welfare organisations have condemned Edinburgh Zoo's plans to add elephants and manatees to its collection and continue keeping polar bears. The zoo, which is one of Scotland's top tourist attractions, announced the £58 million expansion plan this week, which will see the park divided into four "biome" zones, joined by a railway. Included in the redesign are plans to introduce new animals, including several endangered species
2006-02-24 - Mysore, India.
Three employees of Mysore Zoo have been dismissed from service for their alleged role which resulted in the unnatural death of two elephants in the zoo in October 2003, a senior official said today. The dismissal was ordered after an inquiry by a retired civil judge, the Zoo Executive Director, Manoj Kumar, said in a statement here.
2006-02-24 - Pekanbaru, Indonesia.
At least 51 wild elephants destroyed a number of villagers houses and over tens hectares of palm oil plantation area at Balai Raja, Bengkalis District, Riau in the past two days. Two villagers were hurt in the attacks by wild elephants, Balai Raja Village Head Samudji AMP told ANTARA News here Friday. In the past two months, at least five times the wild elephants ran amok, he said.
2006-02-24 - PHILADELPHIA, United States.
An animal-rights activist was banned from the Philadelphia Zoo for online comments directed at the facility's chief executive. Marianne Bessey, leader of Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants, wrote in an Internet chat room called the Elephant Connection about Dulary, an elephant kept in a concrete barn since August. She said zoo director Alexander L. "Pete" Hoskins might suffer nightmares about Dulary, a 42-year-old, injured elephant in his care, and might indeed be past his own life expectancy, the ...
2006-02-23 - Chicago, United States. Leah Hope
Chicago is the city that works and one alderman wants this city to be the one that works for elephants. An ordinance proposed by 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith to protect the animal attracted global attention at City Hall Thursday. As elephants roam at a sanctuary in Tennessee and visitors stop in awe of the elephants at Brookfield Zoo, a debate rages about what's best for elephants in captivity.
2006-02-22 - Seattle, United States. Marisa McQuilken
In 1990, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association deemed Woodland Park Zoo's elephant forest "best new exhibit." Today, Seattle's seemingly plush pachyderm quarters have garnered a much different title. The animal-rights organization In Defense of Animals has named Woodland Park Zoo one of the country's 10 worst for elephants.
2006-02-22 - Kolhapur, India.
Four elephants were found dead near Jelugude village in Chandgad tehsil of the district today. Police and forest sources said the death of the elephants was possibly because of their coming in contact with broken live electric wires lying in a field close to a minor irrigation project near the village. The incident came to light when the farmers went at the site for work and found the tuskers dead. They then informed the police and forest offcials about the tragedy.
2006-02-22 - CHICAGO, United States.
In an effort to force passage of a city-wide ordinance that would effectively ban elephants from zoos and circuses, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is parading a steady stream of elephant "experts" in front of Chicago reporters. What the media won't hear, however, is PETA's own dismal record regarding the welfare of elephants and other animals.
2006-02-22 - AMSTERDAM, Netherlands.
Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam announced on Wednesday that three of its elephants will be moved to Ireland this year. The herd in Rotterdam zoo is so large the management decided on a 'vertical' split of the group. The three females - Bernhardine, Jasmine and Anak, who is almost three - will be placed in a new enclosure Dublin Zoo is constructing. Bernhardine, 12, was the first elephant to be born in a Dutch zoo. All three elephants are ready to be mothers.
2006-02-20 - Gaborone, Botswana.
The Elephant Management Plan has recommended that the Central District should be an elephant-free zone, Minister for Environment, Wildlife and Tourism told Parliament on Friday. However, Mokaila told Parliament that removing the elephants was not easy. "Removing the elephants from this area is a mammoth task, which will require a lot of consultation with the international community because of sensitivities surrounding the killing of elephants," Mokaila observed.
2006-02-20 - Thiruvananthapuram, India.
Kerala Forest Minister A Sujanapal today said the government has taken stern action against cruelty to elephants. He told the State Assembly that the government was taking stern action under the Wildlife Proection Act of 1972 and Kerala Captive Elephant (Management and Maintenance) rules of 2003. According to a survey conducted in 2005, there were 5,135 wild elephants in Wayanad, Nilambur, Anamudi and Periyar Elephant Reserve Forests in the state.
2006-02-18 - Sydney, Australia.
Zoos in Sydney and Melbourne have agreed to send 40 Australian native animals to a safari park in Thailand at which it is alleged many animals have died, Fairfax newspapers report. In exchange Melbourne Zoo and Taronga Zoo will import eight Asian elephants. The plan is detailed in a memorandum of agreement between the Thai government and the Victorian and NSW government signed in June 2004, the newspapers are reporting.
2006-02-17 - Cape Town, South Africa. Sarah Lockwood
Two hundred and fifty years after the last elephants were hunted out in the Breede River Valley near Worcester, the giants have returned to roam their traditional territory. Two bull African elephants called Letaba and Klaserie are the latest additions to the Fairy Glen Game Reserve in the Breede River Valley near Worcester, making the reserve the closest park to Cape Town able to offer visitors the "Big Five" experience.
2006-02-17 - Tsavo, Kenya. Karen Allen
Kenya's worst drought in a decade is having a devastating effect on national parks as humans and animals compete for increasingly scarce natural resources. Wildlife is straying out of the parks, and cattle and herdsmen are straying in as each tries to search wherever they can for food and water. In Tsavo East, half the national park's elephants have broken the boundaries. Three people have been killed in as many months by the animals desperately foraging for food.
2006-02-17 - Moscow, Russian Federation.
Approximately 10,000 years after the last mammoths used to roam across the North American and Eurasian spaces, they still remain an exciting subject of inquiry for researchers. Mammoths and elephants belong to the most ancient group of mammals, therefore, when studying mammoths the researchers reveal secrets of evolutionary origin of contemporary species. Discussions continue about genetic kinship of mammoths and contemporary elephants.
2006-02-16 - Bunyaruguru, Uganda. Thair Shaikh
THEY say that elephants never forget, and it could be that they are using their memories to exact revenge on people who make their lives a misery. A new study says that the usually gentle giants may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) brought on by frightening experiences at an early age. In parts of Uganda they have raided villages, demolished huts and destroyed plots, not in an effort to get at food but to scare the people living there.
2006-02-16 - Saigon, Vietnam.
Ban Don, a M’Nong village by the Srepok River, is well-known throughout Southeast Asia as the native land of elephant hunters and trainers. Since the 18th century, locals have caught and tamed elephants here. Now Ban Don, or Don Village, some 36 kilometers west of Buon Ma Thuot City in the Central Highlands province of Daklak, is still famous for training elephants… so that tourists can ride on them! The elephants take visitors through villages, paddy fields and jungles, and visitors can lea...
2006-02-16 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Cooped up in just 5% of its former living space, the future of Asia's elephants is looking increasingly bleak. Latest estimates suggest that with the wild population down to fewer than 50 000 animals, the Asian species is now outnumbered 10 to one by its distantly related African cousins. However, at a recent meeting in Malaysia, elephant custodians from 13 Asian elephant range states came together for the first time to discuss similar problems and to prepare long-term plans to protect a species...
2006-02-15 - Seneca, United States.
A national animals rights group is calling for the end of elephant breeding at the Seneca Park Zoo. The group called "In Defense Of Animals" says breeding elephants in zoo conditions endanger their lives. Last week, Genny C lost her baby during delivery after 21 months of pregnancy. Genny C is doing fine. The Seneca Park Zoo says it takes pride in its animal treatment and says this group has a much larger agenda, shutting down zoos altogether.
2006-02-14 - Seattle, United States. Njoki Kibanya
On 14th February 2006, Jazz musician Kenny G & actor Pierce Brosnan came together and held a "Save the Elephants" Valentine's Day benefit whose proceeds went to the Save the Elephants Trust. Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Founder, Save the Elephants attended the benefit and said it was "just sensational".
2006-02-13 - Paignton, United Kingdom.
A GIRAFFE just six days old and its mother died in a fire at a zoo last night. A male giraffe and two elephants were led to safety at Paignton Zoo in Devon. The fire was believed to have started in bedding hay in the elephant house. A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesman said an investigation was under way to establish the cause of the blaze.
2006-02-13 - Nairobi, Kenya. JEFF OTIENO
Kenya has been singled out as one of the leading transit points for the illegal animal trade destined for Europe and Asia. According to a recent report titled Ivory Markets of Europe, most of the ivory originates from war-torn countries of sub-Saharan Africa where laws against the killing of wildlife are almost non-existent.
2006-02-12 - Nairobi, Kenya. RODRIQUE NGOWI
Elephants, buffaloes and other wild animals drink water on one side of a swamp. On the other, Maasai warriors watch hundreds of cattle graze as the tropical sun sears the parched land of this wildlife sanctuary. Balancing the needs of both sides is becoming more complex, and environmentalists fear the wildlife are gradually losing out.
2006-02-11 - PENANG, Malaysia. SIOW YUEN CHING
Five elephants made their debut at the Thaipusam celebrations here making this year's festival even more meaningful. Devotees were seen bowing their heads before the elephants at the carpark of the Penang Municipal Park to seek blessings from Lord Ganesh often referred to as the Hindu Elephant God. The one bull and four cow elephants were brought in from Thailand by NS Cempaka Resources, a Negri Sembilan-based company that organised elephant shows.
2006-02-11 - Dresden, Germany. Dan Koehl
After 629 days of pregnancy Dresden Zoos first elephant baby was born on saturday 4th of February. The mother, the 16 year old african elephant Drumbo, had a fast birth, which is germanys first elephant birth through artificial insemaniation. Father is Tembo, an elephant bull from the zoo in Colchester, England. The baby was 87 cm tall and weighed 107 kg.
2006-02-11 - Colombo, Sri Lanka. BHARATHA MALLAWARACHI
Dozens of captive elephants raised funds for their upkeep Saturday by running races, and playing tug-of-war and dancing to the rhythm of traditional drums, during an elephant show in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Elephant trainers maneuvered their animals - draped in bright colored cloths - through a lively game of polo amid loud cheers from the boisterous crowd, most of whom were children.
2006-02-10 - Woburn, United Kingdom.
Experienced and non-experienced applicants are invited to apply to join one of the most progressive elephant sections in the UK to help look after Woburn's three Asian Elephants. The elephant section at Woburn operates a hands on policy in order that the elephants can be given the freedom to enjoy the surrounding lakes and woodland in safety. Full training in elephant handling will be given.
2006-02-10 - Thiruvananthapuram, India.
The Kerala Government will start an elephant rehabilitation centre at Kottoor, near here, State Finance Minister Vakkom Purushothaman said today. The government will also be introducing a ''Gajaraja Award'' for the best domesticated elephant and separate awards given to the most caring owner and mahout, he said while presenting the Budget in the Assembly.
2006-02-09 - New York, United States.
Rosamond Gifford Zoo will be paying a $10,000 fine to the USDA after their plan to use the money for something else was rejected. The zoo was fined after the death of the four-day-old elephant baby Kedar, who died on August 4th, hours after he fell into a swimming pool in the zoo's elephant exhibit.
2006-02-09 - Seneca, United States. Marketta Gregory
The baby elephant expected at Seneca Park has died during delivery, county officials announced today. The elephant's 28-year-old mother Genny C went into labor at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, but it was determined by 10 a.m. today that the calf was not responding. "Our baby elephant has died," said County Executive Maggie Brooks. "Our concern now shifts to Genny C and her well-being."
2006-02-08 - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India. Don Sebastian
If pedantics have their way, captive elephants in Kerala would soon be deprived of their sex life. Citing ancient scriptures pertaining to elephant care, a handful of elephant lovers at least think that breeding elephants would spell doom for its owners. Experts beg to differ.
2006-02-07 - MELBOURNE, Australia. Sarah Wotherspoon
Zoo will welcome three Asian elephants this year after a tribunal yesterday approved their entry. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal imposed 18 conditions. The three female elephants -- Num-Oi, Dokkoon and Kulab -- will join cow Mek Kapah and bull Bong Su in the zoo's $13.5 million Trail of the Elephants enclosure. Five other Thai-reared elephants will go to Taronga Zoo in Sydney. The Sydney Zoo has been told the elephants will be moved to Dubbo if 22 conditions are not met.
2006-02-07 - Bronx, United States. JOSEPH BERGER
Elephants have never lost the capacity to astonish and delight. But in New York City in the not-so-distant future, they will not be doing their astonishing and delighting at a zoo. The Bronx Zoo, the only zoo left in the city that keeps elephants, said yesterday that it planned to shut down its exhibit after the death of two of its three elephants, or even one.
2006-02-07 - Sirsi, Karnataka, India.
Captive elephants in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have reason to smile as a scientific study to check its health is on, perhaps for the first time in the country. Based on the study, conducted by the Wildlife Protection and Rehabilitation Centre, Dehradun, and Health Assessment and Infectious Disease Screening of Captive Asian Elephants of Southern India Project, each owner would be given a 'Health Card', detailing the health condition of the jumbos.
2006-02-06 - Wheeling, West Virginia, United States.
Trains students to be competent elephant managers. Course content focuses on the foundation necessary for developing comprehensive and proactive elephant management programs. Students will take away skills for creating self-sustaining elephant management programs.
2006-02-06 - Masterton, New Zealand. NATHAN CROMBIE
Circus for sale – one iconic New Zealand travelling extravaganza with lions and clowns, monkeys and poodles, horses, acrobats and the only working African elephant this side of the equator - $1m or near offer. Wairarapa will see the last of the Whirling Bros Circus with owner and founder Tony Ratcliffe cracking the whip, following their final Masterton show at Queen Elizabeth Park tomorrow night.
2006-02-06 - Sydney, Australia.
EIGHT Asian elephants destined for zoos in Sydney and Melbourne have been cleared to enter the country after a commonwealth tribunal approved their importation from Thailand. However, the licence to import the endangered animals means the zoos will have to meet a number of conditions to ensure their welfare, including appropriate flooring and the installation of closed circuit television.
2006-02-05 - LUSAKA, Zambia.
Poor villagers and wild elephants are engaged in an increasingly bitter battle for space and food in Zambia, with animal conservation authorities accused of doing little to end the conflict. The elephants have claimed lives and destroyed property and vast fields of maize and cassava in the landlocked country. Terrorized people say Zambia's estimated 25,000 elephants have pushed the hungry and helpless deeper into poverty.
2006-02-04 - Kolhapur, India. Sachin Diwan
Last Sunday, 60- year- old Umaji Lingappa Gurav was fatally assaulted by a wild elephant in Kaliwade village of Chandgad taluka —the third victim since last year. Around 14 villages in Chandgad are now infested by wild elephants that have created havoc in the lives of the villagers — earlier it was the bison menace that harrassed them.
2006-02-04 - Lusaka, Sri Lanka.
Three wild elephants which have sustained injuries from landmines buried in Ganshapuram along Sri Lanka Government controlled Mannar-Vavuniya Road Wednesday morning have crossed over into the jungles at the Madhu side. Wild Department officials and veterinary surgeons are reported to have refused to enter the forest located in the Liberation Tigers controlled area to treat the elephants, sources said.
2006-02-03 - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India.
A 47-year-old man was gored to death by an elephant at Chirayinkeezhu early on Thursday morning. The incident occurred shortly after the conclusion of the festival at the Mukkaluvattam Devi temple, Puthukkari, Chirayinkeezhu. The man, who has been identified as Mani of Paravur, had gone near the elephant to receive the ‘thidambu’, which was handed down by the second mahout Udayakumar, Chirayinkeezhu police said.
2006-02-03 - Leesville, United States. WILL TUBBS
Nearly five tons of living, breathing pachyderm awaits visitors at the American All-Star Circus this weekend. Queeny the Elephant will perform in the three-ring circus and will be available for adults and children to ride. Queeny, who is 38 and lives outside Houston with her trainer, Will Davenport, hails from India and tips the scales at a svelte 9,860 pounds
2006-02-02 - Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.
The Citizen Petition filed today with the U.S. Department of Agriculture by an animal rights group is yet another transparent attempt to generate controversy where there is none, said the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. These extremists have targeted elephants as the first, but not the last, species they want to ban from zoos. In fact, they have plainly stated that their goal is to close all zoos.
2006-02-02 - Detroit, United States.
The non-profit group In Defense of Animals filed a petition today claiming U-S zoos are violating the federal Animal Welfare Act in their treatment of elephants. The petition cites the Detroit Zoo’s decision last year to close its elephant exhibit and send its animals to a sanctuary in California.
2006-02-01 - ASUNCION, Paraguay.
A 13-year-old boy who entered an elephant's open-air cage to feed it a mango was crushed to death on Tuesday. Guillermo Gonzalez got past a rock wall and two metal fences to reach the 4 1/2 -ton elephant, named Maia, but the animal reacted violently, stomping the teenager to death before a trainer could intervene. "Maia understood that its territory had been invaded by a stranger, which is why the elephant trapped Guillermo with the trunk, taking him by the legs and then crushing him with one of...
2006-01-31 - Lusaka, Zambia. Freddie Phiri
HERDS of elephants have invaded maize and cassava fields in Mukungule chiefdom in Mpika district of Northern Province. One of the affected people, Emelda Mulenga of Kabungo village said herds of elephants had eaten their crops. "Jumbos have left the park and are destroying our crops and plunging us into further poverty" complained Mulenga. Mulenga, who said the most affected village was Kabungo, appealed to government to send game scouts to get rid of the animals before crops are entirely destro...
2006-01-30 - Richmond, Illinois, United States. Jeff Long
Two Asian elephants began a 650-mile journey Monday from a troubled circus training farm near far north suburban Richmond to a sanctuary in Tennessee, where operators have promised them a life of ease and comfort. "The biggest difference for them will be that the barn's more open," said Scott Blais, the sanctuary's co-founder. "It's a lot brighter, with natural light."
2006-01-30 - Sofia, Bulgaria.
One of the symbols of Sofia's Zoo the elephant Sivitri passed away Monday morning aged 58, which is equal to 100 human years. The elephant named after an Indian goddess was first transported to Sofia from India at the age of 7. Sivitri was first transported to Sofia back in 1955. In India she "worked" at a school for lumbermen. Sivitri was the eldest animal at Sofia Zoo.
2006-01-28 - Galle, Sri Lanka.
The 5th Taprobane Trophy Elephant Polo Championships heralded the welcome return of international sport to the South Coast of Srilanka for the first time since the tsunami. The coastal towns and villages along the south & western seaboards of Sri Lanka have worked resiliently in the quest to successfully rise & rebuild from the destruction of Dec 26 2004.
2006-01-27 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
All nations with wild populations of Asian elephants have met as a group for the first time to discuss the species' future survival. The aim of the meeting in Kuala Lumpur was to reach a consensus on the best way to tackle threats facing the continent's largest mammal. Delegates agreed that transboundary cooperation was necessary to protect the creatures' dwindling habitat.
2006-01-27 - Richmond, Illinois, United States.
Two of the eight elephants leaving a troubled circus-training facility near Richmond in McHenry County are tentatively scheduled to depart Sunday for a sanctuary in Tennessee, a sanctuary official said. But the owner of the elephants, who agreed to give them up after allegations of animal cruelty were made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said a Monday departure is more likely.
2006-01-27 - Kochi, India.
Five leading elephant experts and 100 mahouts in Kerala will be honoured for the first time - and the latter will also get free insurance. Balakrishna Shenoy, vice president of Elephant Care, an NGO, told IANS: "The function is unique because this is being jointly organised by the Kerala forest department, the Elephant Owners Welfare Association and us." The event will take place Saturday.
2006-01-27 - Guwahati, India.
Elephant football match, catwalk and films shows are some of the few events of the hugely popular Kaziranga Elephant Festival-2006, the curtain of which will be opened on Sunday. Festival committee sources today said that Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and some of his cabinet colleagues like Rural Development minister Ripun Bora, Minister of Forests Pradyut Bordoloi would address during the festival.
2006-01-27 - WASHINGTON, United States.
A memorial service will be held outside the National Zoo Saturday to mourn an Asian elephant. Toni, a 40-year-old Asian elephant, was euthanized Wednesday, after suffering for years from a leg injury and arthritis. Monks from the Wat Thai center in Silver Spring will offer a Buddhist blessing. Event organizers will hand out stickers that read, "I'm a friend of Toni, are you?" to shine light on the issue of large animals held in captivity.
2006-01-27 - Washington, United States. Daniel Engber
Veterinarians at the National Zoo put down two animals this week: an arthritic, 40-year-old elephant named Toni and a 13-year-old cheetah with kidney problems named Wandu. What happens to zoo animals when they die? First, a necropsy is performed, and then the remains are cremated.
2006-01-26 - WASHINGTON, United States.
An animal rights group on Thursday appealed to the U.S. National Zoo in Washington to send its three remaining Asian elephants to an animal sanctuary and close its elephant exhibit. The appeal came a day after the zoo put down an arthritic Asian elephant who was said to have been in worsening pain. The elephant named Toni was 40. Elephants can live to be 60 or older.
2006-01-25 - Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Brett Adkins
A NEWBORN elephant rejected by its inexperienced mother at the Bloemfontein Zoo last week has been “adopted” by the Knysna Elephant Park, which is giving the baby pachyderm 24-hour care to ensure its survival in its new Garden Route home. The female calf, which has been named Ashanti, was driven through the night and arrived at the park, situated between Plettenberg Bay and Knysna, in the early hours of Saturday after its birth just four days previously, when the injured animal was discovere...
2006-01-25 - Panaji, India.
A joint meeting of senior wildlife officials and experts from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa was held here to deliberate on ways to tackle the elephants' menace. The meeting, chaired by Goa Chief Secretary J K Dadoo, resolved to undertake a study on the habitat, migration and extent of damage caused by elephants in the three states, and evolve a joint action plan to tackle the same.
2006-01-25 - LINCOLN, Nebraska, United States.
Representatives of the producers of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus plan to speak out against a bill targeting elephant cruelty. The measure is one of the most talked about bills introduced this year. It would prohibit the use of bullhooks, electrical prods, ax handles and other devices on elephants in Nebraska. The bill would not ban elephants at circuses and zoos in the state.
2006-01-25 - Cincinnati, United States. KRISTIN L. VEHRS
Regarding the Enquirer the Your Voice opinion piece of 15 January 2006, "The Cincinnati Zoo lags in humane elephant care": the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) challenges the authors' comments and misrepresentation of the Zoo, its dedicated employees and volunteers. The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden was recently accredited for the fifth time since 1978 by the AZA, which accredits only those zoos and aquariums meeting the highest standards in animal care, conservation, science and ...
2006-01-25 - WASHINGTON, United States. Vera Cohn and Karlyn Barker
An ailing National Zoo elephant, whose worsening arthritis made her the flashpoint of a debate over whether her species belongs in zoos, was euthanized yesterday after her condition deteriorated dramatically. Toni, an Asian elephant, was 40 years old, about two decades short of the typical expected lifespan. She had been at the Smithsonian Institution animal park since 1989.
2006-01-24 - Nashville, United States.
The yearly arrival of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus brings one very strange sight to downtown Nashville – a parade of elephants. Every year when the elephants in the circus arrive, they get off a train at Union Station and march down Broadway to the Gaylord Entertainment Center. Children line up every year to watch the pachyderm parade, and this year was no exception.
2006-01-23 - Washington, United States. Jennifer Viegas
In a female elephant gang, few animals bother the oldest and biggest of the group because they know she will not put up with any nonsense, according to a new study that found age and size determine wild female elephant hierarchies. The study, published in the current issue of Animal Behavior, presents some of the first data on dominance and the social lives of adult, wild female elephants, Loxodonta africana. Females of this species hang out together in family groups for most of their lives.
2006-01-23 - Lampang, Thailand.
Elephants at an elephant sanctuary in Maetang district in Chiang Mai have fallen sick with bloated stomachs, and veterinarians suspect the cause to be from changing of their diet. Veterinarians at "elephant friend" foundation in Lampang province have evacuated the bowels of 30-year-old Khamdee to help him excrete waste after the elephant had not eaten for days due to constipation. Prior to Khamdee, the foundation had treated 6 elephants all from the same elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai's Maetan...
2006-01-21 - Rochester, New York, United States. Victoria E. Freile
Genny C may be weeks away from giving birth, but she'll move into the Seneca Park Zoo's new elephant habitat in a matter of days. Those who want to see Genny C and the zoo's other South African Bush elephant, Lilac, better visit soon. The animals are expected to move to the new habitat Monday, but it won't be open to the public until spring, said zoo Director Larry Sorel.
2006-01-19 - CAPE TOWN, South Africa.
Ten of the world's leading elephant scientists began a conference in Cape Town on Wednesday to debate the future of South Africa's elephants. They are expected to determine whether there are too many elephants, whether they are causing damage to biodiversity and whether action is needed to reduce their population.
Leading South African scientists have advised the government against culling elephants, saying there is no reason to lift a 10-year ban. The government has been considering an end to the ban, amid fears that a rapid increase in the elephant population is threatening the ecological balance. But a panel of 10 experts told the environment minister it was not clear the elephant population was too large.
2006-01-19 - Tipilikwani, Kenya. Mike Pflanz
The worst drought for 22 years in Kenya's lowlands is forcing wild animals out of game parks and on to farmland, where they risk being shot to protect scant crops. At least two villagers and dozens of head of cattle have died in wildlife attacks since November. Aid agencies say that up to four million people face starvation in north-eastern and coastal regions after rains failed again, in some places for the fourth year running.
2006-01-19 - GAUTENG, South Africa. Moagisi Letlhaku
The Brian Boswell Circus, SA's own touring circus, started its season in Centurion this week and will be in town until February 4. The Boswell Circus has been around in South Africa for 24 years and has travelled to neighbouring countries like Botswana and Swaziland. "But our season always starts up here," said Robin Tapinos, the circus' marketing and promotions manager.
2006-01-19 - Dompierre-sur-Besbre, France. EEKMA Elephant Journal
This workshop is primarily oriented to allow keepers to share their experiences and to gain knowledge and practice through presentations. The conference langauge is english. A wise range of topics will be discussed, such as: foot care, medical training, enclosure design, safety, management methods, and emergency situations as a "down elephant".
2006-01-18 - GUWAHATI, India.
A herd of wild elephants trampled to death a woman and three of her children, including a newborn, in Assam, a forest official said on Wednesday. The elephants entered Theldhala village in Dhubri district bordering Bangladesh, about 320 kilometers west of Assam's main city of Guwahati on Tuesday.
2006-01-18 - Bangkok, Thailand.
The Thai government plans to publish a handbook on elephant care in collaboration with a UN agency, the state-run Thai News Agency (TNA) disclosed. The guide, which will initially be published in Thai and English, aims at instructing mahouts (elephant minders) and zoos how to better diagnose pachyderm diseases and quickly seek appropriate veterinarian treatment for problems such as stomach aches. The project, a joint effort of Thailand's Forest Industry Organisation and the United Nations Food a...
2006-01-17 - COX´S BAZAR, Bangladesh.
A herd of wild elephants crushed a Bangladeshi villager to death, the eighth such killing over the past month in the southeast of the country, an official said on Tuesday. Another man was injured in the clash in forests near Cox's Bazaar town, 400 km (250 miles) from Dhaka, where officials say a dwindling natural habitat is forcing elephants to overrun villages.
2006-01-17 - Thiruvananthapuram, India.
The state capital witnessed a rare reception with the chief minister, a former chief minister and a minister among those attending the ceremonial welcome of Guruvayur Padmanabhan, the famed pachyderm who has held pride of place at the Guruvayur temple for over 50 years. Guruvayur Padmanabhan, the tallest tusker among all the elephants in Kerala temples, was making his first trip to the capital.
2006-01-16 - London, United Kingdom. Dea Birkett
WHEN WERE you so close to an elephant that you could touch its trunk? Where did you see a horse racing around just inches away, mane and tail flying? Where have you patted the tufty hair of a camel? The only place you could have done all these things is at a circus. I’ve worked in a circus. I’ve pulled on my fishnet tights, tied up my tassles, adjusted my white feather headdress and ridden into the ring on the back of Julia, my elephant.
2006-01-16 - Sydney, Australia.
Actor Jessica Napier today joined Greens MP Lee Rhiannon in calling on the NSW government to turn its $40 million rainforest enclosure at Taronga Zoo into a home for retired circus elephants rather than bring wild elephants from Thailand. Ms Napier, who has starred in The Alice and McLeod's Daughters, said, "Taronga Zoo should use its newly built rainforest elephant enclosure to house Australia's old circus elephants.
2006-01-16 - Neverland, United States.
Michael Jackson has been accused of animal cruelty at his all-but abandoned Neverland ranch. Animal rights activists have demanded an urgent probe into conditions at the sprawling estate. They claim giraffes, elephants and other creatures are imprisoned in squalid and cramped surroundings. Shocking photographs appear to reveal animals surrounded by their own faeces.
2006-01-15 - Cincinnati, United States. Les Schobert
The Cincinnati Zoo's approach toward elephants is about as outdated as its elephant building, which was built in 1906 ("Elephant exhibit poses care issues," Jan. 2). The zoo ignores the wealth of scientific knowledge gained about elephant behavior and biology over the past several decades that should guide the care of elephants in captivity today.
2006-01-14 - Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
Circus show of animal trainer Taisiya Kornilova “Around the world” has arrived in Yaroslavl recently. The show includes three elephants, and to save them from frosts, the trainers have to give them some vodka. “Such sharp frosts are critical weather conditions for our animals, animal trainer Andrei Kornilov said to a REGNUM correspondent. It's a climatic shock, so we have to warm them by alcohol. Yesterday we gave a bucket of vodka to one of the elephants, and after drinking it...
2006-01-14 - HOSUR, India.
The Hosur forest division has formed four special teams with adequate communication equipment to check elephant menace in the Denkanikotta forest region, according to District Forest Officer S Paulraj. The move comes in the wake of two farmers being trampled to death by elephants in separate incidents within a span of six days. The pachyderms also injured six persons, besides damaging crops worth several lakhs in Denkanikotta and Anchetty regions recently.
2006-01-13 - Mombasa, Kenya.
A herd of elephants temporarily blocked the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway on Thursday morning after a Mombasa-bound bus knocked down a calf. Police said the calf was knocked down as it was crossing the road at Man Eaters, a few kilometres from Manyatta in Voi division. According to an official of Mombasa Liners, the bus that hit the animal at around 5.30am, other elephants to charge on the road, where they surrounded the carcass.
2006-01-13 - Thiruvananthapuram, India. Ramesh Babu
It's going to be a feast fit for a king. And the guest list is just as impressive — ministers (three of them), royalty, movie stars and famous personalities. The star of the show: Padmanabhan, the elephant king of the Sree Krishna temple in Guruvayur. It's been 50 years now that Padmanabhan has been carrying the thidamabhu (miniature of the presiding deity). And on Sunday, Thiruvananthapuram will honour him with gold, silver and aana oottu (elephant feast).
2006-01-13 - Chitwan, Nepal.
As wild elephants spread terror in Patpani village of western Chitwan, a dozen of families here have fled their homes for fear of their lives. A 51-year old Kampari Tamang, a local resident is reported to have been killed by wild elephant yesterday. Fatally injured, she died while being rushed to Bharatpur hospital.
2006-01-12 - NAIROBI, Kenya.
Elephants in Kenyan national parks and reserves are leaving their drought-stricken sanctuaries to search for water and food near human settlements, where they have attacked starving people trying to protect their crops. U.N. agencies have warned of hunger across the region because of drought and say the situation in eastern Kenya is particularly serious. People reportedly have died of hunger during what officials say is the country's worst drought in 22 years.
2006-01-10 - Brighton, United Kingdom. Alice Wignall
The myth of the elephants' graveyard is one of the most enduring in natural history. Although large collections of elephant remains in one place seemed to support the idea that elephants go to a specific site to die, that idea has been disproved. "The bones have other explanations," says Dr Karen McComb, of the University of Sussex, "such as mass die-offs because of disease."
2006-01-10 - ATLANTA, United States.
Starlet, Victoria and Zambezi, female elephants at Zoo Atlanta, will be leaving the zoo for good next winter to breed at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. The three, all in their early 20s, are not expected to return to Atlanta and will be replaced by two older female elephants from Disney's Animal Kingdom: Robin, 34, and Petunia, 32. Because Zoo Atlanta has neither male elephants nor adequate space to breed the animals and raise the calves, the trio in prime breeding age must go elsewhere.
2006-01-10 - Toronto, Canada. ERIC REGULY
Angus, the world's biggest captive elephant, has died only a month before he was to be flown from Canada to South Africa, his homeland, and set free in a game reserve. The 27-year-old elephant, who weighed more than seven tonnes, or as much as six small cars, was found dead on the floor of his heated barn on Sunday evening by his trainer and owner, Michael Hackenberger. Angus was the star attraction of the Bowmanville Zoo, just east of Toronto, where he had lived for 20 years and given rides to ...
2006-01-10 - VALLEJO (BCN), United States.
It stinks to be an elephant at Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo but not for the usual reasons, according to Mill Valley-based In Defense of Animals, a non-profit animal advocacy group. The group included the local amusement park and zoo in its second annual "Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants" list, according to In Defense of Animals spokeswoman Suzanne Roy. The zoo was also included in the inaugural list last year.
2006-01-10 - Nilpara, W.Bengal, India.
Her diminutive frame seems hardly any match for a one-tonne jumbo but put her in front of any pachyderm and you know who's in command. At an ongoing training camp in West Bengal, mahouts are making use of Parboti Barua's inherent talents with the largest living mammal on earth. Popular as perhaps India's only woman mahout trainer, Barua is currently holding the reigns at a seven-day camp in the Nilpara range of the state's Cooch Behar Forest division.
2006-01-10 - Somerset Co., United States.
Glen Savage Ranch, just north of Fairhope in Somerset County, is well known for it's hunting and beautiful scenery, but in just a few years you can add elephants, rinos, and even cheetahs to the mix. The land is being purchased by the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium to be a one of a kind conservation and breeding center for endangered African elephants.
2006-01-10 - Dang, Nepal. TRIBHUWAN NAGAR
Local people of Koltara village of Satbariya VDC-9 of Deukhuri valley of Dang district are living in state of panic as the wild elephants are going on rampage in the village. A group of 6 wild elephants have destroyed standing wheat crops of Tara Bahadur Kunwar and Hemant B.K cultivated on one bigha of land, Tara Bahadur said. Earlier, the resident of Deukhuri was troubled many times by the wild elephants.
2006-01-10 - , United States. Linda Wilson Fuoco
African elephants will live and breed at a 724-acre International Conservation Center in Somerset County in the not-so-distant future. The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium is acquiring the land in Fairhope and Allegheny townships with $2.2 million from The Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington, Va.
2006-01-09 - Pittsburgh, United States. Jennifer Antkowiak
KDKAs Jennifer Antkowiak reports that at least 20 elephants will be moving in to a big ranch. Elephants are critically endangered in the wild and in captivity. The Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium hopes to turn things around by banking on their own world renowned success with the care and breeding of African elephants. The zoo is ready to set up a conservation center on a 724 acre ranch off of Route 31 in Somerset County.
2006-01-09 - Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.
Exciting things have been happening for elephants in zoos since January 2005. That's when directors of the 78 American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) accredited zoos that exhibit elephants endorsed an aggressive new elephant conservation vision. Progress since that meeting includes new babies, new elephant habitats and more conservation programs. These and other advancements made the "AZA Top 10 Elephant Success Stories" list for 2005.
2006-01-07 - Richmond, Illinois, United States.
Authorities say it could take several weeks for a necropsy to determine whether disease killed a 40-year-old Asian elephant last week at a circus-training facility in the McHenry County town of Richmond. Carol Buckley, executive director of The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, said Sue the elephant fell down December 19th after receiving a tranquilizer before a blood test.
2006-01-07 - London, United Kingdom. Will Hide
Prince William is to become patron of The Tusk Trust, the African conservation charity (01747 831005, www.tusk.org), which supports 25 projects in 12 African countries. One success story is the Mokolodi Nature Reserve in Botswana, supported by Tusk for 11 years, where more than 12,000 children a year attend three-day bush camps. But the Prince’s interest in conservation might be on hold — he enters Sandhurst for military training tomorrow.
2006-01-04 - NEW DELHI, India.
For an elephant, south India is the place to be. If it can sidestep poachers, there are good chunks of habitat and even better, 65% of the corridors which link these habitats and allow herds to move freely in protected areas or reserve forests. But in other parts of the country, its nomadic cousin is in trouble. India now has less than 30,000 elephants, most of them running out of space to feed and live in far away from the spotlight focused firmly on the tiger.
2006-01-04 - Chiang Mai, Thailand. PREEYANAT PHANAYANGGOOR
The profitability of the Night Safari is still in doubt without the wild animals from Kenya, but the government is already embarking on a 700-million-baht elephant park as the second stage of its multi-billion-baht Chiang Mai World megaproject. The park, tipped as the biggest of its kind with more than 200 elephants, will cover 6,000 rai of land in the Doi Suthep-Pui national park, which already houses the 1.2-billion-baht Night Safari park.
2006-01-03 - Oregon, United States. HENRY FOUNTAIN
Like Christmas, musth comes but once each year. And for the male elephants that go through it, that's a good thing. For during musth, a period of heightened sexual activity marked by extremely high testosterone levels, males become very aggressive and can work themselves into a frenzy. (The term, first described in Asian elephants, is derived from a Persian word meaning "drunk.")
2006-01-03 - Los Angeles, United States. Ian Sample
Elephants roaming the parched plains of Africa's national parks can get up to half their food by risky midnight raids into crop fields, according to scientists who tracked a herd by satellite monitoring. Conservationists working for Save the Elephants Foundation in Kenya hope that by understanding the elephants' behaviour, they can improve ways of protecting farmers against damage caused by the animals, and in turn protect the elephants from angered farmers. "When an elephant raids a crop field,...
2006-01-03 - OAKLAND, United States. Guy Ashley
Osh, the massive bull elephant who recently completed his first year at the Oakland Zoo, is making friends. And that's downright thrilling news for zookeepers looking to the hulking adolescent to jump-start Oakland's elephant breeding program and rebuff critics who say spotty success shown by zoos worldwide in spawning new generations of the massive pachyderms is but one signal that elephants don't belong in captivity.
2006-01-03 - Santa Barbara, United States.
The Animal Care Department is seeking a keeper to become an active member in the elephant program team. This position will carry out all basic aspects of the care of the animals, including, but not limited to: training, enrichment, maintenance of exhibits, and the guest experience. This position is part of a hard working, progressive animal care team. Although focused on the Zoo's elephants, members of the team also work with other species.
2006-01-02 - Lampung, Indonesia.
Illegal poaching claimed the lives of two elephants that were found shot and their tusks removed in Tanggamus regency in Lampung, just a few kilometers from the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. "The carcasses were left to rot and their tusks taken," said Andoyo, an environmentalist in Tanggamus, on Friday. It is thought the elephants were shot last week.
2006-01-02 - LOS ANGELES, United States.
The chemicals in tail hair discloses the secret of the African elephants' diet and movement, U.S. scientists reported on Monday. Analyzing specific tail hair chemicals, and tracking the subject elephants with radio collars, can help reduce human-elephant conflicts and determine where to establish sanctuaries to protect the endangered creatures, claimed the researchers. Their findings were published in the Jan. 3 online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
2006-01-02 - Cincinnati, United States. Dan Klepal
Elephants have been a major draw at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden for nearly a century. As the zoo embarks on a $2.6 million campaign to expand its elephant exhibit, a plan that includes bringing in a bull elephant so it can begin a captive breeding program, several other zoos have closed exhibits under public pressure after animal deaths or mistreatment allegations.
2006-01-02 - Erfurt, Germany.
Elephants at Erfurt Zoo in eastern Germany enjoy a seasonal diet, enriched by unsold Christmas trees.
