Efforts to reduce poaching in Kenya

Some good news on the efforts to reduce elephant poaching from Kenya! 

On Thursday Feb 23, 2012 the NATION reports that Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) has launched a campaign to protect elephants from poachers. It is a 10 year plan providing a roadmap for conservation and managements of elephants in the country.

“Forestry and Wildlife minister Noah Wekesa told the launch ceremony that the increase in poaching and the level of organisation among illegal ivory traders were worrying.  

“In the light of these worrying trends, we would be calling on the international community to support total ban in  ivory trade in the coming Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) and listing of African elephants on Appendix I of Cites,” Dr Wekesa said.”

It was noted that Kenya lost 278 elephants in 2011 to poachers compared to 177 in 2010. At the same time eight tones of illegally acquired ivory were seized over the last three years.

“The function at the Ivory Burning Site Campsite in Nairobi National Park was attended by conservationists, including representatives of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN),Save the Elephants (STE), African Conservation Centre (ACC), universities and other research institutions, communities from different conservation areas and county councils.

The elephant strategy seeks to maintain and expand elephant distribution and numbers, enhance security to elephants, reduce cases of human-elephant conflict and increase the value of elephants to people and habitats.

The strategy seeks to address emerging problems and threats facing elephant conservation in the country. It aims to achieve this by engaging communities living adjacent to protected areas on the importance of protecting the species through education and awareness.”

All in all it sounds like a fantastic project and initiative. Let’s hope it will work on the ground as good as it sounds!

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Drive+to+stem+elephant+poaching+launched+/-/1056/1333702/-/view/printVersion/-/5jhvya/-/index.html

http://www.africasciencenews.org/en/index.php/entertainment/52-environment/315-kenya-launches-10-year-national-elephant-strategy

War Elephants - new movie

You may want to take a look at the page promoting the upcoming premiere screening of War Elephants in Washington DC - featuring the elephants of Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park.

Dr. Joyce Poole from ElephantVoices joins her brother Bob Poole in his documentary. 

Further down on the page you will find a clip from "Coming of Age with Elephants" from 1996, also filmed by Bob Poole about Joyce's work. Hear Joyce talk about her study of male elephants, starting when she was 19. 

Not to be missed!! 

http://events.nationalgeographic.com/events/films/2012/03/14/war-elephants/

Elephants in Voi

It happened last year and I wanted to share this with you; My visit with the elephants in Voi, Kenya.

Do you love elephants? Possibly foster one through the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust? Wonder how these little guys do, once they leave the orphanage in Nairobi? 

 I’m the proud foster-mom of two girls that were rescued and came into the orphanage with all sorts of wounds on their little bodies and disturbing stories. After healing and bonding with the other elephant babies, human keepers and friends for two year, they ‘graduated’ and moved to the stockade in Voi. From here they will have the chance and opportunity to gradually, when they are ready, go back into the bush and live the life of an adult elephant, the way it is suppose to be.

In September I managed to go to the elephants in Voi and it was the most amazing thing to experience them all grown up (after seeing them both as babies at the orphanage) and have a chance to visit with them for a little while out in the bush!

As it happened, without knowing, I ended up with a milk bottle in my hand and one of my girls came straight for me. With tears streaming down my face and a big huge smile, I marveled at the speed she emptied that big milk bottle and how special this all was.

After everybody had its share, we all went off to a small water & mud bath area and were privileged to see these guys have the most amazing time & fun playing with each other, wallowing in the mud. Being so close to them we had a chance to touch them, which, of course, came with getting red mud all over, that I didn’t want to wash off afterward. Crazy, I know. What can I say?! One doesn’t get a chance to ‘hang out’ with baby/teenage elephants often enough, so, wanted to cherish all impressions, smells, mud and all, as long as I could!

One hour went by way to fast, but I had a feeling I managed to split the time well between taking some photos, visiting and watching them. Can’t wait to go back though!!

And maybe, in a few years, they will go off into the bush, meet a strapping wild male elephant, get pregnant and bring back the baby to show off; which happened just recently with another former orphan. I would be very proud!

Meeting & visiting a little bit with the wonderful, amazing keepers at the Voi stockade was also a highlight! These men are the most dedicated people you can find; they are with the elephants literally all day and keeping a close eye on them at night. (at the orphanage in Nairobi, one keeper sleeps in each stockade with the babies.) 

The babies look at them as their extended family and it happened many times now that once they are back in the bush and have a baby, they will come back to the stockade to show of their baby's to their human family!! Usually they bring some of their complete wild friends and everybody joins into the reunion! Incredible, if you ask me.

Keeping captive Elephants healthy

In an attempt to keeping captive elephants healthy, researchers are coming up with different methods to take the temperature of elephants.

 

Here is a report by Andy Wilson, Vision System Design (& thanks to 'Save the Elephants' for distribution) about the latest developments.

"Many of our readers will be familiar with the principle of operation of thermal imaging (infrared) cameras and how they can be used in a variety of applications ranging from determining the thermal loss of buildings, detecting specific gases, or monitoring production processes.

But like me, most people might be surprised to hear that a group of researchers from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) are now using such cameras to study the thermoregulation of animals such as elephants.

That's right. As a member in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science (APS), Esther Finegan and her students have filmed elephants in Busch Gardens zoological park in Florida with a thermal imaging camera to see how and when they store and radiate heat. She and her students are now pioneering similar thermoregulation studies at the Toronto Zoo.

While the use of thermal imaging will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable tool that will enable zookeepers and landscape architects to better design the animals surroundings to keep them happy and healthy, this isn't the only means by which researchers have measured the temperature of such beasts.

Last year, for example, scientists at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology (FIWI) at the University of Veterinary Medicine (Vienna, Austria) showed that Asian elephants respond to high daytime temperatures by significantly lowering their body temperature during the cooler night hours. By doing so they create a thermal reserve that allows them to store heat and so prevent heat stress as temperatures rise during the day.

To reach that conclusion, they fed small telemeters to a group of captive elephants in Thailand and a group at the Munich Zoo Hellabrunn to monitor temperatures in the animals' gastrointestinal tract. The telemetry system, which permits the continuous recording of temperature, had previously been developed at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology.

Statistical analysis of the data confirmed that while the overall mean body temperature was similar in both the Thai and the German elephants, fluctuations in body temperature were on average twice as large in the Thai animals as in the German ones. The Thai animals had both a higher daily peak temperature and a lower minimum temperature, which the scientists related to the higher mean ambient temperatures in Thailand.

In fact, the body temperature of the Thai elephants dropped at night to well below the normal average, meaning that Thai elephants start the day with a much larger thermal reserve than their German counterparts.

It just goes to show that, just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there is also more than one way to take the temperature of an elephant. But if I were an elephant, I'd probably prefer the noninvasive image-processing approach rather than ingesting a telemetry system."

 

http://www.vision-systems.com/blogs/vision-insider/2012/01/taking-the-temperature-of-elephants.html