For 27 years Angola was gripped by civil war. Half a million human lives were lost and wildlife, too, was decimated to sustain troops. Rhino and elephants became valuable targets – rhino horn and ivory served as currency for arms among rebel forces. During the conflict elephant populations fled across the border into Botswana, Zambia…
I’m a Japanese woman married to a British diplomat. We keep moving places every 3 to 4 years and currently live in Malawi after staying four years in Kenya. Since our Kenya days, we’ve visited a number of national parks and game reserves in Kenya, Zambia and South Africa to appreciate rich African wildlife. The…
HONOLULU, Aug. 31, 2016 – The alarming results of the Great Elephant Census (GEC), the first-ever Africa-wide survey of savanna elephants, were announced on Wednesday at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress by Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc.. The census shows a decline of 30 percent in African savanna elephant…
Celebrating World’s Best Elephant Films The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) teamed up in organizing an International Elephant Film Festival to raise global awareness of the various challenges facing the African and Asian elephants, as a highlight…
I’ll never forget the first time I saw an elephant in the wild. It was in Kruger National Park, north east of Johannesburg, in 2006. On a tour bus of 14, I was by far the loudest as we trundled round a corner, on sandy terrain and almost ran into it. A magnificent beast, its…
The planned destruction of 2.6 tonnes of ivory was blocked yesterday by Tanzanian authorities who argued that the tusks were needed as evidence for prosecution of suspected poachers. The ivory in question had been seized by Malawi Revenue Authority in 2013 from two wildlife traffickers, Patrick and Chauncy Kaunda, and the High Court of…
Last Tuesday two brothers were fined MK2.5 million ($5,500) each for trafficking 2.6 tonnes of ivory by the High Court of Malawi. Patrick and Chancy Kaunda pleaded guilty to charges of ivory trafficking and money laundering and chose to pay the fine instead of serving the 7 year jail term. ‘To say we were disappointed…