It can be hard to know if someone is really into you. Sometimes, you get hints—a certain look or smile, a nervous blush or flirtation. Giraffes get none of that. They have no set breeding season. They don’t go into heat, like dogs or cats. They don’t make mating calls or provide visual cues of […]
Tag: Etosha National Park
Elephants in Southern Africa – Management Issues and Options
Elephant conservation in southern Africa has been remarkably successful over the last century. The region’s elephant populations collapsed in the late 1880s through over-hunting, but their numbers have since increased more than 20-fold; from less than a few thousand to 250,000 – 300,000 today. The overall biomass of elephants in southern Africa is now higher […]
Cheetah reintroduction in Malawi brings vultures back to the skies
Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the reintroduction of cheetahs, lions and the carcasses the cats left behind, conservationists say. In 2017, seven cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) were reintroduced to Liwonde National Park […]
Humans are biggest factor defining elephant ranges across Africa, study finds
In an undisturbed ecosystem, elephants move across the landscape in response to the availability of food and water and the type of habitat or competition. But according to a continent-wide study coordinated by Save the Elephants and recently published in Current Biology, elephants’ range is now predominantly defined by human activities and the boundaries of […]
Iconic Namibian elephant ‘Voortrekker’ killed by trophy hunter
Namibia’s most famous elephant bull known as Voortrekker (“Pioneer”) to thousands of tourists was shot last week by a trophy hunter, ten years after he first escaped the hunter’s bullet. The elephant was shot on a “problem elephant “permit, however it appears that this was false, as a letter from three communal conservancies opposing the […]
POLL: Should the export of “legal ivory” be made illegal?
The United Kingdom ships more legal ivory beyond its borders than any other country, according to an analysis released today by the London-based NGO Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). The announcement comes two days before World Elephant Day on Saturday. Globally, elephant numbers are falling, down 30 percent between 2007 and 2014 — a decline driven largely […]
Elephant refugees flee to last stronghold in Africa
Chobe National Park, Botswana – The elephants swim across the river in a straight line, trunks jutting out of the water like snorkels. With low, guttural bellows, they push their bodies together, forming a living raft to bolster a calf too tiny to stay afloat on its own. This pachyderm flotilla has a dangerous destination […]
Take me to the place where the white boys dance…
To kick off this post, I have to apologise to the band “The Killers”, whose song title made a perfect title for this photo and its resulting blog post. As you may know, we recently returned from an amazing family safari-camping-roadtrip through some of the most iconic places in Namibia. One of the destinations was […]