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At around 8.15pm on September 15, 1885, Jumbo, the celebrity elephant in P.T. Barnum’s circus had finished his evening performance early in Ontario, Canada. Matthew Scott, Jumbo’s lifelong trainer began the arduous process of loading the enormous animal back into his ornate boxcar that was lacquered with crimson and gold paint and featured massive double doors in the middle to facilitate easy access for the seven ton animal celebrity. The circus handlers were under strict orders from the Grand Trunk Railroad depot not to begin loading the elephants until 9.55pm, long after a westbound express freight train was due to...

A group of Sri Lankan military and wildlife officials staged the daring rescue of two drowning wild elephants this week off of that nation’s eastern coast.

Chaminda Walakuluge said the navy mounted the 12-hour rescue after spotting the elephant struggling to stay afloat around eight kilometres (five miles) off the island's northeast coast. Divers aided by wildlife officials approached the distressed animal and tied ropes to it before towing it gently to shallow waters near the coast, where it was released late on Tuesday. Walakuluge said the animal had likely got swept into the sea while crossing the Kokkilai lagoon, a large stretch of water that lies between two areas of jungle. "They usually wade through shallow waters or even swim across to take a short...

KOCHI: The swirling multicolour LED lights that give dance floors their zing have found a totally different use in Kerala’s Wayanad district. The forest department has deployed .. Read more at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/67016900.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst ..

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

People in Mayilattumpara, a village in southwest India, could not sleep at night. Because of habitat loss, wild elephants would enter their village to look for food, destroying crops and farmland. The villagers tried to keep the wild elephants out with electric fences, deep holes and plants believed to keep the animals away. They even tried beating drums. Nothing worked! The repeated destruction of crops led some villagers to stop farming. But the situation turned around last year. That is because residents have finally found what keeps the elephants away: honey bees. Elephants, it turns out, are afraid of loudly...

The petition to grant three Goshen elephants legal rights as “persons” was denied by a judge at Superior Court in Torrington on Tuesday, court records show. In a memorandum of decision, Judge James Bentivegna called the petition “wholly frivolous on its face in legal terms.” The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) had filed the lawsuit on Nov. 13, arguing that Beulah, Karen and Minnie — three elephants captured in the wild and now living at the Commerford Zoo in Goshen — are legal “persons” with fundamental rights and they must be released into a sanctuary. “‘Person’ is not a synonym for...

Big-game trophy decision will be announced next week but will be very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal.

It’s not often that President Trump’s Twitter feed is the voice of reason and compassion, but on the issue of trophy hunting it makes more sense than his own Department of Interior. Trump put on hold the department’s initial decision to reverse an Obama-era ban and allow the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. In a tweet, the president referred to trophy hunting as a “horror show.” He said he would be “very hard pressed” to conclude that such hunting advances the cause of conservation, the justification for the decision. Trump, who has publicly dissented in the past...

Conservationists who have a visceral emotional reaction to words like “carbon emissions” and “TransCanada” and “Rick Perry” rarely find themselves closely allied with President Trump’s opinions on the proper stewardship of the planet. Trump has consistently dismantled Obama-era environmental protections, using the common refrain that his administration desires to “better balance conservation strategies and policies with the equally legitimate need of creating jobs for hard-working American families.” So, some who’ve criticized Trump might have done a double take when they read one of his tweets Friday morning. The message effectively put the brakes on a new administration policy that would...

Why the elephant's survival should be important to everyone. Consider this sobering statistic: In less than a decade, the African elephant may be extinct. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a statement Wednesday, argued that the large fees collected from permits to hunt would help fund conservation efforts—but we think there's a better way forward. Pilar Guzmán, editor in chief of Condé Nast Traveler, sat down with Chelsea Clinton last year to learn more about the Elephants Action Network—a conservation group formed by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2013—and why the elephant's survival should be important to everyone. Their...

The Trump administration plans to allow hunters to import trophies of elephants they killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia back to the United States, reversing a ban put in place by the Obama administration in 2014, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed to ABC News today. Even though elephants are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, a provision in the act allows the government to give permits to import these trophies if there is evidence that the hunting actually benefits conservation for that species. The official said they have new information from officials in Zimbabwe and Zambia...

Mali’s elephants, Africa’s northernmost herd and adapted to life in the country’s harsh desert, were in desperate need of protection. The animals live in an unforgiving landscape southeast of Timbuktu, enduring sandstorms and blistering temperatures. To survive, they trek in search of food and water across what is thought to be the biggest migratory range of their species, more than 12,400 square miles. But it wasn’t only climate change endangering the elephants. It was also poachers. They were being slaughtered in staggering numbers as ivory traffickers took advantage of a security vacuum in the region, with 163 killed since 2012,...

New Delhi (AFP) – India’s top hunter on Friday led a shoot-to-kill pursuit of an elephant whose murderous rampage through villages has left 15 people dead. The government has turned to sharpshooter Nawab Shafat Ali Khan ahead of World Elephant Day on Saturday to hunt the animal who crushed four victims in the eastern state of Bihar in March before crossing into neighbouring Jharkhand and killing 11 more. Jharkhand’s chief forest and wildlife conservator L.R. Singh said the decision to kill the animal was made after a team failed to tranquilise and capture the elephant during a week-long mission. Singh...

SNIP A professional hunter was killed when an elephant that had just been shot fell on top of him, according to reports. South African big-game bagger Theunis Botha, 51, was leading a hunt in Zimbabwe on Friday when his group accidentally walked into the path of a herd of breeding elephants near Hwange National Park and three of the elephant cows charged at them, the Telegraph reports. Botha fired at the rampaging pack but was caught by surprise when a fourth cow came in from the side and picked him up with her trunk. SNIP

Hillary Clinton was a secret guest at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday and she appeared to have arrived straight off a Star Wars set. Photos shared by fans show a pale Hillary slouching in a chair on the stage. As filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow as upright in her chair, Clinton laid back, looking very pale and wearing something all black that looked like it was right out of “The Empire Strikes Back.”

NEW YORK (AP) -- The premiere of a virtual reality short by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow was already a high-profile event at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday night. And then Hillary Clinton walked onstage. Clinton was an unannounced panelist, there to discuss the scourge of elephant poaching - the subject of Bigelow's eight-minute film "The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers' Shoes," about park rangers trying to save elephants in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She spoke about her work to save elephants from poachers slaughtering them for their ivory tusks, both as secretary of...

According to an aerial count in 2014 there are around 44,000 elephants at Hwange Elephant numbers across Africa have been declining rapidly under the onslaught of ivory poachers. However, one national park faces an entirely different problem. Hwange’s elephant population just keeps growing. But what, on the face of it, might appear to be good news has become an equally serious problem, one that is more a threat to the elephants long-term survival than ivory poaching. Quite simply, Hwange has too many elephants reports Martin Dunn. Zimbabwe’s Hwange National park is a six thousand square mile area founded in the...

One of Kenya's last great tusker elephants was reportedly shot and killed by poachers. During a routine flyover on January 4 by the conservation group Tsavo Trust in southern Kenya, the body of a famous, roughly 50-year-old African elephant known as Satao II was discovered, though news of his death was only announced Monday. While the cause of death has not been confirmed, conservationists believe he was killed by a poisoned arrow while feeding in the eastern region of the park. The area is known as a "poaching hot spot." African elephants are traditionally referred to as "tuskers" when their...

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