A recent study conducted by researchers of Saint Louis University (USA) and the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (France) has found that elephant populations play a crucial role in regulating the Earth’s atmosphere through their impact on the carbon cycle. The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlights…
Poaching rare wildlife for teeth, tusks, fur, horns and other body parts is a crime which threatens many species with extinction, but the evidence which could incriminate traffickers is often difficult to access, hard to interpret, or piecemeal. To discover more about the criminal networks sustaining this trade, researchers in the US, Kenya and Singapore…
Oxford University study leads cutting-edge scientific and historic analysis of elephant tusks found in shipwrecked cargo. OXFORD, 17 December 2020 – An international team has discovered the origin of the largest cargo of African ivory found from the oldest shipwreck in southern Africa. The discovery of a 16th-century shipwreck has, with the aid of advanced scientific…
Experts from the University of Stirling, working closely with the Government of Gabon, have led an international study into the impact of climate change on Central Africa’s rainforests and the threat posed to elephant populations in the region. Dr Emma Bush and Dr Robin Whytock, of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, along with Professors Kate…
As they roam around the African savanna in search for food, giraffes and elephants alter the diversity and richness of its vegetation. By studying the foraging patterns of these megaherbivores across different terrains in a savanna in Kenya, scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and collaborating institutions discovered that these large mammals prefer…
We are in the midst of an elephant poaching epidemic across the African continent. Fueled by a growing middle class in Asia that is hungry for ivory status symbols, these iconic and intelligent mammals are being slaughtered for their tusks at an alarming rate. While there has been a lot of media focus on savannah…
Pangolins, a group of unique African and Asian scaly mammals, are considered to be one of the most heavily trafficked wild mammals in the world. They are hunted and traded for their meat, scales, and other body parts, and used as traditional medicines in parts of Africa and Asia. Of the eight pangolin species, four are found…
Forest elephant extinction would exacerbate climate change. That’s according to a new study in Nature Geoscience which links feeding by elephants with an increase in the amount of carbon that forests are able to store. The bad news is that African forest elephants – smaller and more vulnerable relatives of the better known African bush…
Beehive fences can help improve human-elephant coexistence. By Katarzyna Nowak, University of the Free State When people cultivate food crops on or near wild lands it can be assumed that wild animals will eat them – what’s known as crop-raiding. Farms in the vicinity of protected areas can expect to be visited by a range…
A genetic study of living and extinct elephant species generated proof forest elephants and the savanna elephants are indeed two separate species – an issue that has been a scientific debate for many years. The scientists behind the study hope that these findings help boost separate conservation efforts for both species of African elephants. Elephants are the…