By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick From the smallest microbes to the largest mammals, a sweeping new study has painted the clearest picture yet of how human activity is reshaping life on Earth. Our footprint is everywhere and it’s leaving complex, far-reaching marks on...
By Peter Borchert, iFaw Elephants need water—lots of it. Depending on their size, they must drink 100 to 200 litres at least every two to three days to avoid potentially severe dehydration. In hot weather, an elephant can lose as much as 7.5% of its body mass daily...
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick The draft strategy is skewed in favour of anthropocentric benefits – economic, spiritual and cultural – and cannot function in practical terms. South Africa’s Draft National Elephant Heritage Strategy, which closed to public comment at...
By Adam Cruise - The Bateleurs One of the central pillars of wildlife conservation, particularly in southern Africa, is the notion that if wild species are to be conserved, they must have economic value. The basic thinking behind this concept is that if animals such...
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick Imagine a world where elephants roam freely across vast, interconnected landscapes, their ancient wisdom anchoring the health of the African savanna. This is the future envisioned in Rudi van Aarde’s Let Elephants Roam, a powerful call...
By George Wittemyer - The Conversation Surveying elephants is hard, risky work. Dedicated biologists have been doing this challenging task across Africa for decades. Systematic surveying started in the late 1960s but has been sporadic, as access to remote areas...
By Dr Sam Ferreira - Specialist Scientist: Large Mammals SANParks What the Research Says About Elephant Numbers So, how many elephants is too many elephants? It’s a question people have wrestled with for ages. Kruger National Park, home to one of Africa’s largest...
By Stephanie Klarmann - The Revelator Arguments abound on the benefits and dangers of trophy hunting. We need a careful, measured approach to analyzing how it’s justified and promoted. Trophy hunting remains a contentious subject amongst scientists, conservationists,...
By Adam Cruise - The Bateleurs A trophic cascade is an ecological process which starts at the top of the food-chain and cascades all the way down to the bottom. African elephants, for example operate, in the natural landscape in this way. Biologists often refer...
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick An aerial survey across the Okavango Delta in Botswana in 2020 discovered clusters of dead elephants. On the ground local conservationists came across a bizarre scene: waterholes littered with what looked like 350 elephant statues in...