I know it is a bit of a short notice, but nevertheless. Please take a look and if you can, GO!!
The line up of speakers is fantastic and the news and updates you will hear and learn about will be incredible, in short, PRICELESS!!!
It is hosted at the Oakland Zoo
Location: Oakland Zoo
Maddie’s Center/Zimmer Auditorium, on the first floor
9777 Golf Links Road, Oakland, CA
March 28, 29, 30
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
$250 general; $175 student
Price includes:
• Welcome reception on Wednesday evening at the Oakland Zoo
• Vegetarian or vegan lunch on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Summit lunches presented by renowned Chef, Tanya Petrovna
• Complimentary shuttle service to and from the Oakland Zoo for conference attendees
• staying at the Hilton Hotel-Oakland Airport location.
Price does not include:
Other transportation, lodging, or any meals not mentioned.
Saturday, March 31
ARK 2000 SANCTUARY*
Optional excursion to PAWS’ ARK 2000 sanctuary in San Andreas, CA.
9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
$75 per person; includes transportation to and from San Andreas and a sack lunch.
Join PAWS directors, Pat Derby and Ed Stewart, for an intimate, behind-the-scene
tour of the first captive elephant sanctuary in the United States.
ARK 2000 shuttles will be available at two locations — Oakland Zoo and the
Hilton Hotel-Oakland Airport. When you register, please indicate at which location you
will be boarding the shuttle. Check-in will begin promptly at 8:45 a.m. Space is limited.
*ARK 2000 excursion is open to conference attendees/speakers only.
And the Speaker's are:
• Pat Derby and Ed Stewart: Founders, Performing Animal Welfare Society
• Joyce Poole and Petter Granli: Founders, ElephantVoices
• Jan Creamer and Tim Phillips: Founders, Animal Defenders International (ADI)
• Matt Rossell: Campaign Director, Animal Defenders International (ADI)
• Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani: Founders, Wildlife SOS India
• Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell: Founder, Utopia Scientific
• Joel Parrott, DVM: Executive Director, Oakland Zoo
• Colleen Kinzley: Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Research, Oakland Zoo
• Gina Kinzley: Senior Elephant Keeper, Oakland Zoo
• Guy Lichty: Curator of Mammals, North Carolina Zoo
• Member, Steering Committee for the Elephant Taxon Advisor Group/Species Survival Plan
• for the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA)
• Rob Atkinson: CEO, The Elephant Sanctuary (TES)
• Keith Lindsay, Ph.D.: Researcher/Conservation Biologist, Scientific Advisory Committee,
• Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP)
• Dagmar Gerdes: Operant Conditioning Manager/Protected Contact, San Juan de Aragon Zoo, Mexico
• Cindy Machado: Director of Animal Services, Marin Humane Society
• Gail Laule: President, Active Environments
• Margaret Whittaker: Consultant, Active Environments
• Katie Maneeley: Founder, The Animal Agency
• Anna Ware: Board of Directors, Atlanta Humane Society
• Deborah Robinson: Volunteer/Elephant Campaign, In Defense of Animals (IDA)
• Catherine Doyle: Elephant Welfare Specialist/Campaign Director, In Defense of Animals (IDA)
• Ariel Fagan: Tufts University, Veterinarian Department
• Cherie Travis: Executive Director, Chicago Commission On Animal Care & Control
• Winnie Kiiru: Research Associate, Amboseli Elephant Research Project (AERP)
• Sofie Goetghebeur and Tony Verhulst: Founders, Elephant Haven (European elephant sanctuary)
• Adam M. Stone: Assistant Curator of Behavioral Management, Elephant Program Manager, ZooAtlanta
• Leonie Vestering: Wilde Dieren de Tent Uit (Dutch association against the use of wild animals in circuses)
• Linda Faso: Las Vegas Animal Advocate
• Martha Golar, Esq.: Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Animal Law
• Delcianna Winders: Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement, PETA
• Denise M. Sofranko, DVM: Field Specialist for Elephants, USDA, APHIS, Animal Care
• Sharon Niel: Conservationist, Researcher and Author
CONFERENCE CONTACT INFORMATION
Kim Gardner, event coordinator: 916/488-3991
E-mail Kim Gardner: kgardner@pawsweb.org
PAWS office: 209/745-2606
E-mail PAWS: info@pawsweb.org
PAWS’ website: www.pawsweb.org
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
A special fundraiser for Elephants & ElephantVoices with Dr. Joyce Poole
CELEBRATE ELEPHANTVOICES’ 10TH ANNIVERSARY WITH US!
Join us for an inspiring afternoon with this world-renowned biologist and elephant advocate as she brings you closer to the world of the Asian and African elephant:
Learn about Elephant Partners, a unique program that uses web technology and citizen science to monitor & protect the Maasai Mara elephants.
Get a special sneak-peek of “War Elephants”, National Geographic Wild’s upcoming documentary featuring Dr. Poole, her brother Bob and the elephants of Gorongosa, Mozambique.
Hear about ElephantVoices’ work for elephants in captivity.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
2:00 p.m. VIP Reception
3:00-5:30 p.m. Event Reception & Presentation
Hors d’oeuvres and drinks at the Home of Patty Shenker and Doug Stoll
971 Enchanted Way, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
$150 VIP Reception
Meet Dr. Poole & ElephantVoices’ co-founder Petter Granli one-on-one; receive a beautiful elephant photo
$75 Event Reception & Presentation
To RSVP for this event:
Call 323-301-5730 or email davidkca@earthlink.net
To make a reservation - space is limited!
If you cannot attend, please make a donation today by visiting www.elephantvoices.org
All proceeds go directly to ElephantVoices, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
African Elephants
It has been said, that African Elephants are destructive to the environment in which they live....
Overpopulation and farmers getting deeper and deeper into forests and other animal habitats are usually the result of old migration routes being cut off, forcing elephants and other animals into unnatural reserves - like the Masai Mara.
Their massive appetites can appear to be destructive in those places (Adults may consume up to 170 kg of plant material and dedicate up to 18 hours to this activity daily).
But there is something to be said about their role in the regeneration of the forest by spreading the seeds of many species. For example, Acacia seeds sprout much better after being eaten and dunged by elephants than if they simply fall to the ground. The ever grateful Dung beetles tackle the football-sized elephant droppings, break them down into little pellets and pull them into their burrows where the seeds germinate.
Elephants also dig up dried-out water holes with their tusks and feet, which provides moisture for other animals.
It seems, in fact, that the number of plant species is falling in the regions where elephants no longer live and recovering in other areas where the elephant is more often.
In 1987, two-thirds of Kenya elephants had been brutally killed and butchered for their ivory. Poachers went unrestricted despite a ban on hunting. Especially Tsavo National Park, once a glorious kingdom where elephants roamed free, became a place of agonizing solitary death of hundreds of defenseless elephants killed by human greed.
As the herd numbers plummeted into the hundreds it became a time for desperate action. A shoot-to-kill policy for military rangers with appropriate training and equipment was enacted and enforced. When Richard Leaky was nominated by the President of Kenya as the new Director of the Wildlife Department in 1989, he decided to let actions speak louder than words and work begun for a BIG Ivory fire.On July 18, 1989 twelve tons of ivory, worth over three million dollars and representing almost 2,000 dead elephants, where set ablaze in the Nairobi National Park and set an unprecedented example of coherence.
It seems that we are in desperate need (2011) to do something similar again, as poaching still sores and elephants keep dying for their ivory in insane numbers.
Considering the damage we as humans cause this planet, and comparing that to the destruction elephants do to the environment, the damage doesn’t seem all that great. Maybe we can find a way to live on this globe side by side, with a minimum of damage to the environment and help keep these incredible animals alive.
Elephants are the most engaging of all animals to watch and have always fascinated people. It might be because their interactions, behavior patterns and personalities have so many human-like parallels. They are very social, frequently touching and caressing one another and entwining their trunks. Also their extraordinary memory, their anatomical uniqueness, their great intelligence and the way they communicate have fascinated us all for a long time.
The most common way for elephants to communicate is through blare sounds, which are produced through their trunk, and people who have heard that sound while visiting Africa will never forget it. They also emit infrasound at frequencies between 5 and 28 hertz, that are to high for humans to hear. These sounds can travel anywhere from 2.5 miles up to 6 miles. The elephants were the first terrestrial mammals known to make use of this phenomenon.
The age-old myth, that elephants carry the tusks and bones of dead elephants to the secret 'elephant burial grounds', and also when they are getting old, to go there to die, has no factual base.
Elephants do demonstrate a large concern for members of their families, take care of weak or injured members and appear to grieve over a dead companion.
DID YOU KNOW:
- That elephant babys are born after a 22 months pregnancy, with the whole family in attendance and a mere weight of about 220 pounds?
- That they use their tusks as either ‘left-’ or ‘right-handed’, the same as humans prefer one or the other hand?
- That the trunk of an African elephant weighs as much as two adult men, which makes it understandable why some elephants curl them over one of their trunks from time to time?!
- That the footprint of an elephant looks very much like a fingerprint, with distinct crisscross patterns of bumps and streaks?
- That an elephant can smell water up to 12 miles away with its trunk?
- That the absence of tusks in African elephants is becoming more frequent, which seems quite clearly a genetic response to the preferences of hunters for those with the largest tusks?
- That a tusk can suffer painful tooth decay?
- That elephants do not sweat as they have no sweat glands?
- That the ears of an African elephant are almost 3 times bigger than those of the Asian elephants?
- That the matriarch remembers the location of all the year-round water sources in the herd’s territory?
Sunday, February 26, 2012
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!
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
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.
Friday, February 3, 2012
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."
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."
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