Filed from Tsavo by IFAW's Edward Indakwa
December 04,2008

At Lugard Falls, along the Galana River in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, a concrete bridge invites the brave to Northern Tsavo.

Unlike the Park’s southern sector – a tourism haven with roads and hotels – Northern Tsavo, as the area north of Galana is known, is desolate.

Starved of ground water sources and devoid of humanity, except, perhaps, armed poachers tiptoeing across the savanna and the ranger sentinels who keep the peace, the north is a wilderness.

By Stephanie Small
December 3, 2008
Photo by Nikolaj Lasbo.

There is somewhere you can go to buy gum chewed by celebrities and people selling their own body parts: eBay. The Web site is a place to go for the weird, as well as for the everyday item.

Associated Press
November 29. 2008
OPEKOLOE, Sudan

The hippos had fled to other islands in the White Nile, driven away by one of the few forces that can dislodge a large herd of these fierce beasts — an even larger herd of elephants.

And there they were: some 50 elephants, massive black figures peacefully grazing on their newly reclaimed territory on the Nile island of Opekoloe.

Henry Neondo, Africa Science News Service
30 November 2008

The elephant population in the expansive Northern Kenya has increased by 5 per cent since the last count in 2002, according to the latest census report released Saturday. The population stands at 7, 468 elephants in the 28,000 km square Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu ecosystem, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service report released at Samburu Serena Lodge in Buffalo Springs National Reserve in Isiolo District.

Agencee France Presse
November 17, 2008
GABORONE (AFP)

Elephants and other animals in one of Africa's richest wildlife spots in Chobe, Botswana are dying as they feed off rubbish dumped by growing human populations encroaching on their land.

Four elephants died recently after feeding at a landfill site built in Botswana's second biggest national park, which falls on a route used by the large mammals as they head to drink from the Chobe River, a wildlife warden said.

The elephants are among scores of animals whose deaths have been blamed on the dumping site.

By Alex Morales
Nov. 14 (Bloomberg)

South Africa may start its first elephant culls since 1994 next year to protect other species harmed by their destruction of habitats.

South Africa's elephant population has swelled to 17,000 from 200 in 1900 when hunting had slashed their numbers, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, South Africa's environment minister, said Nov. 12 in an interview in London. That's leading to overgrazing that threatens animal species including rhinos and antelopes, he said.

Press Release by Johannes Haasbroek, Elephant-Human Relations Aid
11th November, 2008

Elephant-Human Relations Aid (EHRA) realized that one of this years three trophy hunting permits issued for elephants in the western Kunene regions, which was to be shared by two conservancies, Sorris-Sorris and Otjimboyo which border the Ugab River, have only one resident breeding bull large enough to be regarded as a trophy.

By Tony Carnie, Independent Online
November 3, 2008

South African conservation agencies could raise as much as R100-million this week, when a massive stockpile of 51 tons of elephant tusks goes on sale at the country's first ivory auction in two decades.

Some of the tusks are bigger than a very tall man. Others are small sticks, small enough to slip into a trouser pocket.

Article at the following link:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20081103052...

In the News
03 Nov 2008

A wildlife sanctuary in Thailand has come up with an innovative way of keeping elephants away from farmer's crops – unwanted CDs.

The Elephant Conservation Network (ECN), working alongside the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), is the first to use the CDs as light reflectors to deter the elephants from destroying Thailand's crops.

Article at the following link:

African Wildlife - Adopt an Acre

This fact is the inspiration behind the African Wildlife Foundation’s “African Heartlands” and our Adopt African Acres program. African Heartlands are large landscapes identified by AWF as having unmatched concentrations of wildlife – and the potential to sustain them for centuries to come. At the core of these Heartlands are national parks and wildlife reserves. But wildlife also live outside the boundaries of these protected areas. And the wild lands around these core areas must be conserved.