Free Republic

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...

In the 1970s, Kenya had about six times as many elephants as Zimbabwe, and today Zimbabwe has three times more elephants than Kenya (see chart).  What happened that caused the dramatic reversal in elephant populations in the two African countries?  Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) explain in their excellent article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community": "Anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting Kenya to ban all hunting in 1977. Since then, its population of large wild animals has declined between 60 and 70 percent. The country’s elephant population declined from 167,000 in...

<p>IRAKLIO, Greece (AP) -- Researchers on the southern Greek island of Crete have unearthed the fossilized tusk, teeth and bones of a Deinotherium Gigantisimum, a fearsome elephant-like creature that might have given rise to ancient legends of one-eyed cyclops monsters.</p>

A team of Pakistani researchers claims to have unearthed a 1.1 million-year-old stegodon tusk in the central province of Punjab, potentially shedding new light on the mammal's evolutionary journey. They've finally found a fossilized mosquito full of prehistoric blood! So a real "Jurassic Park" is right around the corner, right? Stegodonts, distant cousins of modern elephants, are thought to have been present on earth from around 11 million years ago until the late Pleistocene period, which lasted until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,700 years ago. The tusk measures some eight feet (2.44 metres) in length and...

A mysterious bony growth found in elephants' feet is actually a sixth "toe", scientists report. For more than 300 years, the structure has puzzled researchers, but this study suggests that it helps to support elephants' colossal weight. Fossils reveal that this "pre-digit" evolved about 40 million years ago, at a point when early elephants became larger and more land-based. The research is published in the journal Science. Lead author Professor John Hutchinson, from the UK's structure and motion laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College, said: "It's a cool mystery that goes back to 1706, when the first elephant was dissected...

Genetic researchers may have resolved a long-standing dispute by proving there are two species of African elephant.Savannah and forest elephants have been separated for at least three million years, they say, and are as distinct from each other as Asian elephants are from the extinct woolly mammoth. The researchers also made what they say are the first sequences of nuclear DNA from the extinct American mastodon. > "The divergence of the two species took place around the time of the divergence of the Asian elephant and woolly mammoths," said Michi Hofreiter, a specialist in ancient DNA at the UK's York...

The Texas Republican Party is reminding its auxiliary clubs about a cardinal rule: Keep those Democrats and other non-Republicans away from your microphones and stages; you're not in the business of boosting the opposition.But the warning has created a near-revolt in at least one corner.One of the events that prompted the reminder took place in early summer, when state Rep. Craig Eiland addressed the Galveston Island Pachyderm Club.Pachyderm Clubs — there are 30 in Texas with about 2,000 members — are named after the Grand Old Party's mascot, the elephant.Eiland is a Democrat — in the mascot world, a donkey.His...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A judge gave a Tennessee zoo six months to convince him that an African elephant named Ruby is adapting well to her new home after being separated from a pachyderm friend in Los Angeles last year. Judge George Wu ordered the report from the Knoxville Zoo on Thursday during a hearing in a lawsuit that seeks to return Ruby to the Los Angeles Zoo.

WHEN THE NEWS of the elephant layoffs first hit yesterday, I immediately drove out to the zoo to say goodbye to Dolly and Anna, who would soon be in a huge, antiseptic tractor-trailer bound for God knows where, wherever they send elephants that get pink slips. Look, you know a city's in trouble when they start laying off cops and firemen and municipal workers. But when they start laying off the elephants, well, it's over, Jack. Time to pack your bags and call a real estate agent.

<p>KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa -- Around dusk, the elephants start moving out from the Sabie River into the bush for the night.</p> <p>A big old wrinkly male with huge floppy ears leads a half dozen females, recalcitrant teens and calves across the paved road running beside the river. One of the females flaps her ears and makes a step toward a car that has gotten too close. The car speeds away.</p>