Latest Elephant Stories

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online In February 2012, poachers on horseback entered into Cameroon’s Bouba N’Djida National Park and killed at least 300 elephants, according to a CNN report. According to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), poachers entered into Dzanga-Ndoki National Park and into an area known as the “village of elephants” this week. Eye witness reports claim the poachers were shooting in the direction of the elephants, but it is...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online According to new research published in Wednesday’s edition of the journal PLoS ONE, elephants are unable to recognize visual cues provided by humans – a discovery which could help shape future conservation efforts to help protect the massive mammals from poaching and other dangers. The study was a collaboration between the non-profit organization Think Elephants International and a team of 12- to 14-year-old students from New...

Surveys find Chinese public highly supportive of wildlife protection but unaware of African poaching crises BEIJING, April 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, former NBA star and Chinese icon, Yao Ming, launched a major public awareness campaign targeting consumption of ivory and rhino horn in China in partnership with WildAid, Save the Elephants, African Wildlife Foundation, and the Yao Ming Foundation. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130416/SF95498) In August 2012, Yao...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online African forest elephants live in the forests of Central and Western Africa. They are a smaller cousin to the African savannah elephant, with straighter tusks and smoother skin, which many consider to be a separate species. They are also being poached into extinction. A new study led by the San Diego Zoo Global Wildlife Conservancy reveals that over the past decade, a stunning 62 percent of all forest elephants have been killed for their...

YARMOUTH PORT, Mass., March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Poachers in Chad have slaughtered 86 elephants, including 33 pregnant females, in less than a week. The elephants were killed close to the Chad border with Cameroon and their ivory hacked out. It is the worst killing spree of elephants since early 2012 when poachers from Chad and Sudan killed as many as many as 650 elephants in a matter of weeks in Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park. "This is completely shocking,"...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The idea of bringing woolly mammoths and saber tooth cats back from the dead has been a popular one, and this concept of "de-extinction" is the focus National Geographic's cover for its April issue. Author Carl Zimmer wrote in April's National Geographic cover story about what scientists have done, and are doing to work on bringing some extinct species back from the dead. Species discussed in the feature focus on those that went...

WASHINGTON, March 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released by the Environmental Investigation Agency: Environmentalists today appealed to internet giant Google to remove thousands of ads from its Japanese Shopping site that promote products for sale from endangered whale and elephant species. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130304/DC70154) The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non profit group based in Washington, DC and London, UK...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The prime minister of Thailand has pledged to take steps to change the country’s currently legal domestic ivory trade in order to help protect endangered elephants, various media outlets reported Sunday. Speaking during the opening day of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Yingluck Shinawatra announced that she would be amending Thai law with the intention of putting an end to a market which...

Elephant Water, Inc. is a new tech company that serves as an entrepreneurial hub for college students to build, grow, and sustain a business while in school. Omaha, Nebraska (PRWEB) February 23, 2013 With the emergence of smaller-scale niche networks, Elephant Water, Inc., is a multi-functional online platform that fosters college entrepreneurship on campuses across the United States. The company is celebrating its first transaction at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where a...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Gabon's Minkebe Park, once home to Africa's largest forest elephant population, has lost a staggering 11,100 individuals to poaching for the ivory trade, according to a new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Recent surveys of regions of the park, conducted by WCS, WWF and Gabon's Agence Nationale des parcs Nationaux (ANPN), reveal that two thirds of the park's elephant population has vanished since 2004, with the...