Wonderful story by Mary Wykstra, cheetah researcher, as she follows "Mom's" cheetah family.


                              

(Tsavo, Kenya – 21 March 2011) –Nine elephants, six male and three female, in Tsavo East and West National Parks have now been collared in three days. Plans were to collar ten elephants but one of the collars failed to pick any signal from the satellite and was termed a flopped collar. The operation has been deemed fully successful after having no injury or mortality to both human and animals.

The nine elephants will be tracked to assist in the mapping out of the migratory corridors in the Parks and the buffer zones within the 43,000 square kilometres ecosystem. Their aim is to effectively equip the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to design intervention measures for human-elephant conflict mitigation as well as mount security operations for the pachyderms.

The collared elephants’ movements are already being monitored and this will continue for close to 20 months, as long as they retain the collars. The project is a partnership between the International Fund for Animal welfare (IFAW) and KWS. In addition to providing an on-site technical team, IFAW supplied the collars, satellite image receivers and software, and fuel for the helicopter, spotter plane and vehicles.

Speaking at the end of the exercise, IFAW Eastern Africa Regional Director, James Isiche lauded the team effort of the two organisations. “Collaring four elephants per day in Tsavo is no mean feat! We covered close to 1,000 kilometres on dirt roads with the team working tirelessly from the wee hours of the morning until late evening.

IFAW hopes that the management interventions by KWS will be rapid and positive in terms of repelling elephants to reduce conflict with communities around Tsavo, and boosting anti-poaching efforts. This is particularly so because of increasing cases of human-elephant conflict in the ecosystem and rising incidences of elephant poaching to fuel the illegal ivory trade,” added Isiche.

Five elephants were collared last year by the same team; two of the elephants have since died whilst the movement of the remaining three continues to be monitored. This brings to a total of 12 elephants currently being monitored. Before last year, the last collaring in Tsavo was done in 1972 using conventional collars that required manual tracking with radio transmitters.

The Tsavo ecosystem is critical for elephant conservation as it is home to the largest population of elephants and covers approximately four per cent of Kenya’s landmass. An aerial census conducted last year established 12,573 elephants, a 2% increase from 11,696 in 2008.

Common challenges facing Tsavo’s management are poaching for ivory, human-elephant conflict, human encroachment and habitat destruction, livestock incursions into the Parks, and the adverse effects of climate change such as severe droughts. 

Since 2005, IFAW has partnered with KWS in Tsavo to enhance management operations in anti-poaching and law enforcement efforts, human-wildlife conflict mitigation and resolution, research, park infrastructural support, community conservation initiatives and education.

(End)

.

About IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare)

Founded in 1969, IFAW saves animals in crisis around the world. With projects in more than 40 countries, IFAW rescues individual animals, works to prevent cruelty to animals, and advocates for the protection of wildlife and habitats. For more information, visit www.ifaw.org. Follow us on Facebookand Twitter.

Contact:

Elizabeth Wamba (IFAW) – Kenya Tel: +254-722 882124; Email: ewamba@ifaw.org

Editors:Broadcast-quality footage and still images of Tsavo Elephants collaring availableat www.ifawimages.com

(Tsavo, Kenya – 18 March 2011) –In an epic operation starting tomorrow, ten elephants in Tsavo East and West National Parks will be collared using satellite technology. The collared elephants, both male and female, will assist in mapping out the migratory corridors in the Parks and the buffer zones within the 43,000 square kilometres ecosystem. This will effectively equip the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to design intervention measures for human-elephant conflict mitigation as well as mount security operations for the pachyderms.

The collared elephants’ movements will be closely monitored for close to 20 months, as long as they retain the collars. The elephants, which will be collared by research scientists from KWS and the International Fund for Animal welfare (IFAW) in a week-long exercise, are spread out in different sites within the ecosystem. In addition to providing an on-site technical team, IFAW has supplied the collars, satellite image receivers and software, and fuel for the helicopter, spotter plane and vehicles.

Five elephants were collared last year by the same team; two of the elephants have since died whilst the movement of the remaining three continues to be monitored. Before last year, the last collaring in Tsavo was done in 1972 using conventional collars that required manual tracking with radio transmitters.

Commenting on the eve of the exercise, IFAW Eastern Africa Regional Director, James Isiche stressed the need for Kenya to embrace cutting-edge technology in the management of its elephant population. “Cases of conflict, particularly around Tsavo, have risen sharply over the years. By monitoring movements of the collared elephants, we anticipate that incidences of death, injury and damage to crops and property arising from conflict with elephants will be minimised by rapid deployment of rangers to those areas.   

“In addition, given the rising elephant poaching in Kenya, we envisage that by monitoring them, more efficient and effective anti-poaching and law enforcement operations will be conducted by Tsavo’s management,” said Isiche.  

The Tsavo ecosystem is critical for elephant conservation as it is home to the largest population of elephants and covers approximately four per cent of Kenya’s landmass. An aerial census conducted last year established 12,573 elephants, a 2% increase from 11,696 in 2008.

Common challenges facing Tsavo’s management are poaching for ivory, human-elephant conflict, human encroachment and habitat destruction, livestock incursions into the Parks, and the adverse effects of climate change such as severe droughts. 

Since 2005, IFAW has partnered with KWS in Tsavo to enhance management operations in anti-poaching and law enforcement efforts, human-wildlife conflict mitigation and resolution, research, park infrastructural support, community conservation initiatives and education.

(End)

Contact:

Elizabeth Wamba (IFAW) – Kenya Tel: + 254 20 3870540 or +254-722 882124; Email: ewamba@ifaw.org

Editors:Broadcast-quality footage and still images of Tsavo Elephants collaring availableat www.ifawimages.com

About IFAW (the International Fund for Animal Welfare)

Founded in 1969, IFAW saves animals in crisis around the world. With projects in more than 40 countries, IFAW rescues individual animals, works to prevent cruelty to animals, and advocates for the protection of wildlife and habitats. For more information, visit Facebookand Twitter.

News from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants
January - February 2012

Dear Jan,
 
It's a new year with new hopes and fears for elephants. The extraordinary baby boom in Amboseli gives us hope. Watching these tiny calves coming into the world and learning how to walk, how to use their trunks and finding out how much fun it is to play with other calves fills one with joy. None of us on the project ever tires of watching the newborns and delighting in their antics.

At the same time we fear for their future. Will they be able to live to 60+ years or will their lives be cut short by a poacher's bullet, a spear or a poisoned cabbage? In this issue we report on TRAFFIC's alarming figures for confiscations of illegal ivory. The demand for ivory is growing and is truly frightening.

Even if the ivory trade could be brought under control, there is the additional fear that elephant habitat will be gone in 10, 20, 30 years.

We at ATE think there is a future for elephants but we have to work extremely hard to secure it. We can't just give up and say we are up against immovable forces and there is nothing we can do about it. Public awareness about the magnificence of elephants and their crucial ecological role in savannahs and forests will help and it is one of our main goals to make sure people know what the Earth would lose if elephants were to go extinct.

Please help us to spread the word.

With thanks for your concern and support,

Cynthia Moss
Director
Amboseli Trust for Elephants
Like us on Facebook



Jemima's Albino Calf
The first ever recorded albino calf in Amboseli with mother Jemima
Two Albino Calves

After nearly 40 years of documenting elephant births in Amboseli we recorded the first ever albino calf in December. That was amazing and rare enough but now we have a second albino calf. Both are males. The second one was first seen on 29 January. What's happening?

Albinism occurs when both parents contribute genetically recessive alleles (genes), although there are some extremely rare forms when only one parent is responsible. An albino offspring can by produced by two non-albinistic parents and obviously this is what has happened in Amboseli.

We suspect that one of Amboseli's bulls, who has only recently reached the age of being able to successfully mate with females, is carrying the genes for albinism. In the cases were he has impregnated a female who also has the genes there is the possibility of producing an albino calf.

If the male is very active we could expect even more pale calves, but we hope not. Although albino animals grow normally and are generally healthy, they are in danger of skin problems including cancer. Elephants protect their skin from sunburn by mudsplashing and dusting, creating a kind of sunblock. Let's hope that these calves learn to do that quickly. In the meantime, they are seeking shade under their mothers.

We know it is possible for albino elephants to survive in the wild, and these calves were both born to experienced mothers. It is very tempting to imagine what they will look like when they are fully grown. We hope that Amboseli may be home to two magnificent "white" bull elephants in the future.
 


View our videos on YouTube
2011: A 'Horrible Year' for Elephants - Harvey Croze    

Everyone by now has probably seen newclips summarizing the recent report from the IUCN TRAFFIC monitoring unit: An 'Annus Horribilis' for African Elephants, which for some odd reason, borrows a Latin epithet primarily from the Queen's 1992 Guildhall speech inspired by manifold family problems in the house of Windsor.

Back to elephants. TRAFFIC, drawing on the data gleaned by its ETIS (the Elephant Trade Information System), announced with refreshing candor for an intergovernmental organ, that '2011 has seen a record number of large ivory seizures globally, reflecting the sharp rise in illegal ivory trade underway since 2007.'
The report (which can be read here) makes the point that the number of seizures of illegal ivory jumped from an average of around four a year since 2000 -- bad enough considering the volumes of ivory concerned -- to a record high of three times that last year.

The final 2011 tally of 13 seizures amounting to 26,676 kg (52,200 lb) represents the deaths of at the very least 3,400 elephants.

But the picture is much grimmer. As the graph shows, the cumulative number of elephants killed to fill out the TRAFFIC decadal table is not less than 15,000 elephants killed since 2000.

Seisures
International ivory seizures 2001-11 (black) and estimate of minimum cumulative total of elephants killed for the ivory (red).
Source: IUCN/TRAFFIC
 
And the real figure is probably several times that, since no one knows how many illegal shipments of ivory are NOT seized (a widely-held estimate: only 10% of illegal drug or endangered pet-trade shipments are intercepted, a factor that would suggest some 150,000 elephants could been killed over the decade).

Most illegal shipments, TRAFFIC acknowledged, end up either in Thailand or China, where the demand by the nouveau-riche is growing rapidly.

The premium price of illegal ivory is approaching the price of drugs, which, we have learned, are hugely difficult and expensive to control by police action alone.

The ONLY answer is to educate the billion-plus newly-moneyed consumers with the message that using ivory is supremely un-cool, and only elephants should wear ivory.


 Gray
The History of the MA Family
 The MA family was first sighted and photographed on March 26, 1975. It appeared to be a small family, and therefore it should have been a simple group to work out, but it never was. There were six members present that first day including two adult females. It was not until six months later that I saw them again and got better photographs of them. Over the next six months and actually up until 1978 I struggled to figure out who belonged to the MA family.   

The problem was that the MAs were closely bonded to the WAs led by the matriarch Wendy. These two families seemed to be constantly interchanging members. Eventually I decided that there were three adult females in the MA family and I named them Mariana, Mabel and Marcia. Mariana was definitely the matriarch, acting as the leader and defender of the group. I estimated that she was born in 1945. Mabel was the next oldest, but considerably younger than Mariana, and thought to be born around 1957; and Marcia was the youngest, just
a teenager, born around 1960.
 
Mariana Leading Family
Mariana leading her family and the WA

In 1975 there was only one young calf in the family and this was a male belonging to Mariana. Just the tiny tips of his tusks were showing in November 1975, which indicated that he was about two years old and thus born in 1973.

There was also a juvenile male, 10-12 years old, who was thought to be Mariana's older son. He was given the number M118. Another slightly older male was sometimes with the family and sometimes not. It was difficult to say if he was definitely a member of the family. He was called M88.

To complicate matters further there were sometimes one or two other juveniles with the MAs. To this day I do not know if one of the young juvenile females was a true member who died before I knew her properly or a member of another family. One young female turned out to be Winnie of the WAs. Some of the other youngsters who associated with the MA family belonged to three other families that formed a bond group with the MAs.

I eventually discovered that the MAs were members of the largest bond group in the Amboseli population. Bond groups consist of families that appear to have a special relationship with one another. They spend more time with each other than with any other families in the population, and when they meet they greet with a particular ceremony, and when they are together they move together in a coordinated way. In total there were five families in this bond group: the MAs, WAs, VAs, LAs and CAs. The various members of these families were the source of my confusion over sorting out what originally seemed a small, neat family of six.

To read the whole history of the MA family go to the the ATE Website.
Follow us on Twitter



Amboseli Book Chapter Summary: 1. The Amboseli Elephants, Introduction    

Chapter 1, The Amboseli Elephants: Introduction (C. Moss, H. Croze & P. Lee), sets the scene historically and in substance.  When Cynthia and Harvey each moved from their elephant work in Tanzania - with Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Lake Manyara National Park, and with the Serengeti Research Institute, respectively - they joined forces in 1972 to start a systematic study of the Amboseli population called the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, AERP.

There were fewer than 800 elephants back then. Thanks to the intolerance of Maasai inhabitants of the ecosystem to interlopers, the elephants had been relatively untouched by the poaching scourge of the 1970s. It appeared to be a perfect population for baseline studies on elephant social and reproductive behavior, and population dynamics.   The chapter lays out the three main elephantine threads of the book: longevity, size and intelligence, with a fourth dimension -  the future of the population in its ecosystem - looming in the background.

The threads define the special fabric of both AERP and the elephants themselves. Only a long-term project (which even so has only been working for just over half an elephant's potential lifespan), working with a population of known individuals, could capture the physical, developmental and social ebbs and flows of a large-brained, big-bodied, highly intelligent and communicative social animal. Imagine trying to capture the story of The Sopranos in just one episode. Impossible.     

Thus the editors and chapter authors decided to present a three-decade slice - from 1972 to 2002 - of the life and times of the Amboseli elephants, the longest studied and best known population in the world. Much of the information presented in the book is new, or newly analyzed, to augment and build upon the 100-plus peer-reviewed papers that form the AERP canon of scientific literature.

The first chapter features a house-keeping box with definitions of terms used throughout the book. We eschew the bovine term 'herd', and refer instead to 'groups': Cow-calf group, bull group, mixed group and so on. Everyone must know by now that the smallest elephant group is a family unit, led by a matriarch. Adult females come into estrus, nutrition allowing, and males have more or less annual periods of musth, during which high testosterone levels move them to compete for female attention.

The book is laid out in five parts. One establishes the ecological, temporal and human context of the population in an ecosystem that is larger by twenty times than the protected central confines of Amboseli National Park. Two details how the elephants make a living in the Amboseli habitat and the impacts on their population dynamics and distribution. Three comprises an exploration of elephant behavior and communications, rounded out with intriguing perspectives on cognition.  Four examines the complex nature of elephant society and the consequences for female and male reproductive success. And Five looks at the trials and tribulations of elephants in Amboseli's fast-changing human context, finishing with a look to the future of the elephants and the ecosystem.   
Visit Our Website

As I put the finishing touches on this issue of the newsletter word has come from Katito of two more new calves, bringing the number to 100 calves born since mid-October. We've never had anything like this happen before. In the previous baby boom it took more than a year to hit 100. And we're expecting even more calves!

More than anything we want to assure that there is a future for these new lives. We need your support.

 
Cynthia Moss
Amboseli Trust for Elephants

To learn more about the Amboseli elephants go to:       http://www.elephanttrust.org/

A walk into Haller Park is a walk into a rich nature park where flora and fauna peacefully co-exist.

Kenya has become a transit point for contraband ivory, it was revealed on Friday.  Kenya Wildlife Services director Julius Kipng’etich said poachers from Congo, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia were shipping their illegal cargo through the Mombasa port to Asia.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has seized a large consignment of elephant tusks worth Sh158 million at the Mombasa Port destined for export to the Far East. ...

Conservationists in Kenya are receiving SMS messages these days from an unlikely source: Lions roaming the savannah

Nairobi (Reuters) - Kenyan authorities have seized a container loaded with 87 elephant tusks and disguised as soapstone carvings destined for Hong Kong, a customs official said.Kenya seizes container with 87 elephant tusks