By Fred Barbash and Justin Wm. Moyer4 May 2015 (Washington Post) – They never ate anybody — but now, some of planet Earth’s innocent vegetarians face end times. Large herbivores — elephants, hippos, rhinos and gorillas among them — are vanishing from the globe at a startling rate, with some 60 percent threatened with extinction, […]
By Bob Smith9 April 2015 (The Conversation) – African elephants are in serious danger. The magnificent creatures are found in 37 countries – and most of these populations are threatened by poaching. The problem is that protecting elephants isn’t cheap and conservationists struggle to fund their work. In Africa, budgets are tight and governments have […]
By Paula Kahumbu7 April 2015 (CNN) – Elephants could be extinct in the wild within a few decades, leading experts warned late last month in Botswana at the Kasane Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, which gathered 150 delegates from countries that are sourcing, transiting and demanding ivory. The participants signed onto 15 new commitments […]
By Kylie Knott 28 March 2015 (SCMP) – Michael Dyer looks a little awkward in a suit and tie. And no wonder. His usual garb is a safari suit, and his natural environment is the African bush where he runs Borana, an eco-resort and wildlife sanctuary located 200km north of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. But Dyer, […]
Kinshasa, 23 March 2015 (AFP) – Ivory-hungry poachers have killed 30 elephants in a Congolese national park in the past two weeks, park authorities said Monday, adding that the culprits were likely Sudanese militia. News of the Garamba National Park slaughter came as wildlife experts warned at a major summit in Botswana that elephants could […]
BEIJING (AP) — China imposed a one-year ban on ivory imports that took immediate effect Thursday amid criticism that its citizens’ huge appetite for ivory has fueled poaching that threatens the existence of African elephants. The State Administration of Forestry declared the ban in a public notice posted on its official site, in which it […]
7 December 2014 (YouTube) – Either we come together now to make these the last days of ivory-funded terrorism or we witness the last days of elephants in the wild. Created by Director Kathryn Bigelow, Writer Scott Z. Burns, and Annapurna Pictures, in collaboration with WildAid. Visit http://lastdaysofivory.com to get informed and take action. Last […]
By Hyacinth Mascaren1 January 2015 (Global Post) – British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough once asked: “Are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?” This year marked the 100th anniversary of the death of the last passenger pigeon, Martha, who managed […]
By Roger Harrabin30 September 2014 (BBC News) – The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index [pdf]. The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago. […]
18 September 2014 (The Mind Unleashed) – Those who keep taking our biodiversity for granted: dumping corporate waste, spraying copious amounts of herbicides and pesticides, contaminating our water with […] industrial chemicals while generally ignoring the environment at large, have another thing coming. According to a Stanford biology professor, Rodolfo Dirzo, the earth has begun […]
