Despite a petition of over 100,000 signatures condemning the sale, Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism (MEFT) plans to finalize a controversial auction of 170 of its wild elephants on Friday, January 29. The auction has been met with sharp criticism by some conservationists who have questioned the population data and claims of human-elephant […]
Elephants, an endangered species, face a multitude of threats to their survival, most of which are at the hands of humans. They are trophy-hunted, pushed out of their natural habitat, poached for their ivory, neglected in zoos, exploited for various tourist attractions, and forced to perform in circuses. Now, a new threat has joined these […]
Although importing ivory to the U.S. has banned since the 1989 moratorium, there is a legal exception; sport-hunted trophies. The legal loophole permits Americans to shoot elephants and import the ivory into the USA. And it isn’t just the ivory. Safari hunters bring back elehant hide and the leather makes belts, ladies purses & gun […]
An exhaustive new study estimates, habitat suitable to narwhals could shrink by a staggering twenty-five percent by century’s end. Thanks to manmade climate change, their watery home is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. And, in a scant few decades, sea-ice, so vital to their survival, could be gone altogether during Arctic summers. Narwhals […]
Elephants are large, beautiful, majestic creatures that almost every child will love from the minute they see a stuffed elephant, an illustration of one in a storybook, or maybe even one in person. But as we get older we realize that elephants suffer so much at the hands of humans. African elephants are threatened by […]
The threat of poaching for ivory looms over all elephants, but mostly African elephants. Amongst Asian elephants, only males have tusks. Most illegal ivory comes from African elephants. This doesn’t mean that Asian elephants are safe from poaching, though. Their suffering in the tourism industry is quite well documented. They are often taken from the […]
An audacious attempt to allow a huge sale of stockpiled elephant ivory has been defeated at an international wildlife conference. The rancorous debate exposed deep divisions between African nations with opposing views on elephant conservation. About 50 elephants are still being poached every day to supply ivory traffickers and all countries agree the world’s largest […]
Since 2009, there was a ban in Thailand on exporting live elephants. Now, after ten years, the ban has sadly been lifted. More than half of Thailand’s 7,000 elephants are captive, “working” elephants. Captivity is no life for a wild animal. Elephants should be free to roam many miles per day and live among their […]