Elephant poaching »
The Footsteps of Large Animals Fill Landscapes with Life
When you weigh anywhere from 1,000 to 14,000 pounds, you tend to leave huge, deep footprints wherever you walk. But more than just evidence of your passing through, those footprints, it turns out, can
Read More »
Esteeming Elephants: September 22 Is National Elephant Appreciation Day
More than 1,500 “national” days have been declared, according to the National Day Calendar. For example, January 2 is National Cream Puff Day. March 4 is Marching Music Day. The first Saturday in May
Read More »
Bad Economics: Pachyderm Poaching and Refuge Reductions
We are losing animal species at an alarming, unprecedented rate, and our wild places are increasingly coming under attack. If we’re not careful, our planet could soon have far fewer other kinds of beings
Read More »
Protecting the Woolly Mammoth to Save Today’s Elephants
The woolly mammoth—an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago—is currently being considered for legal protection under conservation trade rules. “How that can be?” you might well ask. The answer lies in a story that’s entwined with some very
Read More »
An Elegy – and a Hope – for Elephants
A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON THE U.S. IVORY CRUSH Two years ago when I was on safari in Botswana, I saw my first herd of wild elephants. We heard them first—a low, rumbling thunder in
Read More »
Using Elephants to Pay for Our Wars
On Monday, May 6, 2013, 17 heavily armed poachers entered Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic. They then proceeded to a large clearing known as Dzanga Bai, or “village of elephants,” where
Read More »
