May 2008
KOMPONG SPEU, Cambodia (Reuters) - From nightfall until 3 a.m. the villagers of Trang Troyeung commune, in Cambodia's southwest Kompong Speu province, battled to protect their banana grove from attacks by elephants.
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The residents of several areas including Shravastipura, Siyambalawewa and Aluthwewa in Anuradhapura are facing problems from wild elephants.
They have complained to the police and the Wildlife Conservation Department that a herd of wild elephants that roam the human habitat after dusk had destroyed more than 400 acres of cultivated land and 15 houses.
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AMHERST - Eliminated from Angola during more than two decades of civil war, herds of African elephants are crossing heavily mined fields as they recolonize Angola from neighboring Namibia and Botswana.
But miraculously, they are avoiding the mines entirely, according to researchers at University of Massachusetts in Amherst who are tracking them via global positioning system satellites.
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VIENTIANE, Laos - Connie Speight has swayed on elephant-back through unforgiving jungle and has adopted nine of the high-maintenance beasts. At 83, the retired American teacher is back in this Southeast Asian country to help save what remains of the once mighty herds.
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At least three lions and up to four elephants have been killed on the fringes of Kenya's popular Amboseli National Park in recent weeks, conservationists say, part of an increasingly tense competition between the area's people and wildlife.
The conservation group Lion Guardians says two lions were speared to death on March 9 and another was killed last month. That brings the total to at least ten lions killed in the last eight months and 162 killed near Amboseli since 2001.
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Indian villagers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu awoke to find a thirsty elephant trapped in the village's well.
At 20 feet, the depth of the well prevented the elephant from escaping on its own.
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A few months ago, when he was traveling in the border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Prof. Jeheskel Shoshani found the corpse of a large elephant that had been shot by hunters.
"It was a large male, and the poachers wanted its ivory, so they sawed off its head," he says. "When I saw that, I thought about the last moments in the life of this elephant. Elephants have language - they talk to one another with sounds that we can't hear. I asked myself what sound he made a moment before he died.
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It's a scientific fact: Placed in front of a mirror, an elephant will recognize itself. The thick-skinned beasts are intelligent, self-aware creatures that will cry over the dead bodies of family members, even in the wild. Perhaps that's why a recent announcement by South African authorities that they would begin culling—or killing—herds of elephants as early as May 1 created such a public outcry.
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