Commentary

Help support our writers and journalists.

International elephant corridor put at risk by killing of Botswana’s largest tuskers

By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick While hunters celebrate and conservationists mourn the killing of two of Botswana’s largest-tusked elephants, a biodiversity tragedy is waiting in the wings. or millions of years, elephants have undertaken seasonal migrations, following the rains that nourish the foliage they eat. On the way, they refashion landscapes, fertilise the grasslands essential for countless herbivores and help sequester carbon by spreading seeds. One of their main dispersal routes as they move from the Okavango Delta and central Botswana is northwards along the Kwando River into...

New efforts to protect African forest elephants in Gabon for nature and climate

By Emily Beament - The Independent Measures from boosting ecotourism to electric fences to protect people’s crops are being used to help the critically endangered species. Critically endangered forest elephants play a key role in conserving rainforests that are crucial wildlife habitats and carbon stores, experts in the animals’ stronghold say. Officials in Gabon, central Africa, are implementing measures to try to protect the elephants, other wildlife such as gorillas and chimps, and the carbon-rich Congo Basin rainforest. These range from protected areas and sustainable...

As animal seed dispersers go the way of the dodo, forest plants are at risk

By Sharon Guynup - MongaBay Many plants rely on animals to reproduce, regenerate and spread. But the current sixth mass extinction is wiping out seed-dispersing wildlife that fill this role, altering entire ecosystems.Thousands of species help keep flora alive, from birds and bats to elephants, apes and rodents.Animals give plants the ability to “move,” with the need for mobility rising alongside warming temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events. Transported elsewhere, plants may be able to “outrun” a warming climate.There are growing efforts to restore these critical ecological...

Game changer: How Sam Wasser became the ivory detective

By Dean Paton - The Christian Science Monitor When Sam Wasser was a young biologist studying baboons in Tanzania, he never imagined he would one day lead an international force cracking down on the smuggling of illegal goods, from elephant ivory to pangolins and timber. Yet fighting transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs in law enforcement parlance, is exactly what he’s doing today, all because of his passion for animals. And because he discovered how to extract DNA from elephant poop. Today, Dr. Wasser is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. But in 1989 he was...

Commentary

International elephant corridor put at risk by killing of Botswana’s largest tuskers

New efforts to protect African forest elephants in Gabon for nature and climate

As animal seed dispersers go the way of the dodo, forest plants are at risk

Game changer: How Sam Wasser became the ivory detective

Recent Posts

Whose elephants are they, anyway? Lessons from an Angolan manatee hunter

Namibia admits to questionable export of elephants overseas

In plan for African wildlife corridors, there’s more than one elephant in the room

Categories

archives

Archives

Pin It on Pinterest