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Tuesday, 13 August 2013

My Elextinction Links

12.8.13


www.wildlifedirect.org (hands off our elephants)



www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/ (iworry.org - see below)‎


http://www.savetheelephants.org/


Mali
Gabon/Congo
South Africa

  • Notorious Congolese Ivory Trafficker ConvictedJuly 25, 2013Ghislain “Pepito” Ngondjo was sentenced to 5 years in jail for killing of scores of elephants and illegally selling their ivory, while recruiting new poachers and supplying them with illegal assault rifles.

  • Researcher Studying Endangered Elephants Flees CARJune 12, 2013As a group of armed Séléka rebels invaded the Dzanga-Sangha National Park this spring, WCS conservationist Andrea Turkalo was forced to flee her jungle compound. Her life’s work—and the fate of the park’s famed elephants—now hang in the balance. 

  • Gabon and Central African Republic To Protect Critical Elephant PopulationMay 30, 2013WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper recognizes the outstanding leadership of Gabon president Ali Bongo Ondimba and Michel Djotodia, acting president of the CAR transitional government, in confronting the urgent wildlife emergency in Dzanga Bai and restoring security to the area.

  • Using SMART Technology to Stop Wildlife PoachersMay 23, 2013In the battle against the illegal ivory trade that is decimating elephants, conservation groups are turning to technological solutions to better assist local security forces. WCS's Emma Stokes describes one: the free, open-source Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, or SMART—an innovative software application recently designed to help rangers curb wildlife trade.

  • Elephants in Jeopardy in Central African RepublicMay 15, 2013On a recent expedition to CAR’s Dzanga Bai, part of a World Heritage Site, WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper witnessed first-hand the severity of the danger facing both elephants and the heroic rangers who protect them.

  • Statement on Violence in Central African RepublicMay 10, 2013With hundreds of elephants in Central African Republic’s Dzanga Bai facing death at the hands of criminal bands of poachers, WCS appeals to neighboring countries and the world community to stop the slaughter.

  • Slaughter of the African ElephantsMarch 17, 2013In their New York Times op-ed about the plight of elephants, WCS conservationists Samantha Strindberg and Fiona Maisels conclude: "If we do not act, we will have to shamefully admit to our children that we stood by as elephants were driven out of existence." 

  • Extinction Looms for Forest ElephantsMarch 7, 2013Following the largest study ever conducted on the forest elephant in Central Africa, conservationists say the species could vanish within the next decade. The study comes as 178 countries gather in Bangkok to discuss wildlife trade issues, including poaching and ivory smuggling.

  • New Fears for Forest ElephantsFebruary 28, 2013WCS conservationists fear the worst for forest elephants in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a new survey shows their numbers in the Okapi Faunal Reserve have taken a dramatic plunge. Ivory poaching is to blame.

  • New World Heritage Site in Wild Heart of Central AfricaJuly 2, 2012Forest elephants congregate en masse within TNS, a new World Heritage Site, sometimes in groups of 100 or more. Nowhere else in the world are this many forest elephants spotted together. 

  • New Fears for Congo’s Elephant HavenJune 11, 2012No elephants are immune from increased poaching in the Republic of Congo. WCS advocates doubling the number of guards monitoring the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park and surrounding areas, one of the few safe havens where elephant numbers have remained stable.

  • Tusk Smuggler Gets Tough SentenceAugust 18, 2011The Republic of Congo sends a Chinese ivory smuggler to jail, an example of the tough law enforcement that WCS recommends for combating the illegal wildlife trade.  

  • Forest Elephants Are Running Out of SpaceAugust 17, 2011In the rainforests of Central Africa, hunters are finding their way into once inaccessible terrain, spelling disaster for forest elephants.

  • A Ripple in an Ape OasisMarch 28, 2011A WCS census confirms a healthy population of western lowland gorillas in and around Cameroon’s Deng Deng National Park.  

  • Battle Scars from the BushDecember 1, 2010Elephants that share their turf with poachers may face life-threatening injuries when they encounter a rusty manacle buried in the foliage.

  • Treehuggers of the CongoMay 6, 2010WCS conducts the first landscape-wide survey of how land-use affects chimpanzees, gorillas, and forest elephants.

  • Danger: Elephant Crossing October 27, 2008Poorly planned roads, which are spreading across Central African wilderness areas, attract poachers and cause fear and death among forest elephants.

 

TED TALK

http://www.ted.com/conversations/16713/how_do_we_save_african_elephan.html

 
 
eHow
 
Domestication of the African Elephant from Page 1 on a Google Search

Yahoo Answers on Domestication of the African Elephant

Resolved Question

                 

Why is the Asian elephant exclusively domesticated and the African elephant not?

Is it a matter of social behavior differences, intelligence or just practical reasons in size?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Asian elephants have been shown to be more docile. The people of tropical Asia have used the Asian elephant for generations as workers for heavy lifting and construction. The elephant has been sacred to the Indian culture for thousands of years and they are every strict on the care of them. The natural behavior of the two species of elephants is vastly different. Don't get me wrong both can kill a person if frightened. An Asian elephant is more likely to run into the forest then stampede you. African elephants have had predators trying to kill them and their young for over ten thousand years while Asian elephants have had little predator interaction in that same time frame. This makes them more aggressive towards all animals especially humans. Some say that many African elephants are more hostile toward humans because many have seen a family member killed by humans in there long lifetime. There memories very good and long lasting which allows them to recognize hunters that come back to kill other members of the same herd.

Source(s):

Wildlife conservation and Ecology student at NWMSU and future zoo keeper.
Asker's Rating:
5 out of 5
Asker's Comment:
Thanks :)



Other Answers (2)

  • Before we get all romantic about the noble Indian, I would remind the previous poster about childhood slavery, breaking rocks, and the inhumanity of a strict Caste system!
    Indian Elephants are smaller and a sub species of the Asian elephant.
    In addition, two extinct subspecies are considered by some authorities to have existed:

    The Chinese population is sometimes separated as E. m. rubridens (pink-tusked elephant); it disappeared after the 14th century BC.
    The Syrian Elephant (E. m. asurus), the westernmost and the largest subspecies of the Asian Elephant, went extinct around 100 BC. This latter population, along with other Indian elephants, were considered the best war elephants in antiquity, and found superior to the smallish North African Elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaonensis) used by the armies of Carthage.
    Despite its popularity in zoos, and cuddly portrayal as gentle giants in fiction, elephants are among the world's most potentially dangerous animals. They can crush and kill any other land animal, even the rhinoceros. They can experience unexpected bouts of rage, and can be vindictive.[66] In Africa, groups of young teenage elephants attack human villages in what is thought to be revenge for the destruction of their society by massive cullings done in the 1970s and 80s.[67] [68] In India, male elephants attack villages at night, destroying homes and killing people regularly. In the Indian state of Jharkhand, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004, and in Assam, 239 people have been killed by elephants since 2001.[66] In India, elephants kill up to 200 humans every year, and in Sri Lanka around 50 per year.

    Interesting Q
  • This comes from a completely ignorant pulpit but if I was an Elephan, a monkey, a cow or any other animal I'd rather be in India than in Africa.
    Indians (generally) seem to love their animals, I have seen monkeys behaving like little pests while I was there and people were so patient with them! Also I have seen people washing Elephants, scrubbing them down, treating them with love, while africans are still slaving their own people so you can imagine how they treat their Elephants!
    I have seen some barbaric stuff done to monkeys while I was in Africa! So I think that it is all down to how you treat your animals, for instance in Circuses they have african elephants that behave real well and are friendly.
                 

Gangala-na-Bodio Elephant Domestication Center in Congo




  

WIKIPEDIA
 
**NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC**
 
 
WORLD WILDLIFE
 
 
IWORRY
www.iworry.org/ (This is one place where you can petition for better support from agencies to prevent poaching)
 
 

 15.8.13
 FROM NATION MEDIA GROUP - NATION NEWSPAPER
       
 

15.8.13 20:54h
VIDEO
SEARCHING GOOGLE

Web Results 1-10 of about 88,700 for "elephant poaching kenya video". (0.95 seconds)

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Friday, 9 August 2013

How does one 'manage' disasters? Prevention or cure?

I just came up with this, inspired by the tweet by Mac Prince Otani:

  • 51m
    If Nairobi is this unprepared to manage disasters, what about the remaining 46 counties?
    Expand
    Copyright 2013 by G M Jiwa, Nairobi, Kenya
  • 5m
    Prevention is a product of common sense and community pence but not without respect for the citizen's intelligence
    Retweeted 1 time

    • Posted by at No comments:

    Are there simple models for working out when a population will go extinct?

    I recently received this from Dr John Lewis, and old friend of mine, when I asked him whether I'd get censured for that tweet I posted on @paulakahumbu, below:

    5 Aug

    What's wrong here, please? Population 450,000/ Killed pday 120 / Days in yr 365 = 10 yrs extinct


    Top Tweet
    Expand
    Seems from the '@toptweet' bumperdinkle there it became a subject of quite a lot of discussion.  Well, I was trying to say, "How is it possible for the African elephant to go extinct if this assumes that 120 elephants are being slaughtered everyday?"  Where is the reality?  Paula suggested, at the museum, that about 3 are being killed per day and the figure is rising; then Ol Pejeta came back to me and told me to look again and the figure rose to a whopping 30 per day....  I still can't quite wrap my mind around this.  But for them to go extinct in 10 years we are talking bigtime.  When Amanpour can report that they are using helicopters and machine guns, etcetera, and, now that it seems that poaching has turned into genocide, obviously, we are bound to be reeling!  120 is not difficult for them, evidently.  I felt something was wrong with the math but they are scientists.  They must have done a lot of homework before publicizing the 10 year cut off point.

    This what John replied to my request for advice (egad)!
    Unfortunately, you might be censured for that. ;-) The following is an attempt to describe how the prediction could be done.

    The change in the total population each day is the number born minus the number who die by being killed and by other means. However, all three of those numbers depend on the population, and specifically on the population distribution against age, and on the rate at which each of those events occur against age.

    In particular, the birth rate depends on the rate of mating at a time the gestation period earlier, and the success rate; and the rate of mating depends on the number of each sex against age, and the probability of them mating against age.

    As the population is spread over an area, many of these parameters might depend on the habitat and the numbers in each type of habitat, and the rate of mating also depends on the rate at which they meet, etc..

    No doubt, there is also seasonal behaviour, including migration, to be included.

    Put that lot together and there is a set of differential equations to solve with some parameters and some initial conditions representing the situation at some starting point in time.

    Although it is complex, there is nothing particularly mysterious about any of that; the difficulty is that assumptions need to be made about the parameters and their dependence on age, habitat, time and, possibly on population itself.

    People are doing this kind of modelling, such as these:
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=elephant+population+models

    A simplistic version of this could be done in a spreadsheet, although you might not have read this far!! ;-)

    I then followed John's example and altered the search-string to "models for extinction of the African Elephant" and I found this download on extinction models.  Now I need the advice of experts on how all these estimates are calculated (without being led towards the precipitous gulleys of differential equations, if possible!

    Mohamed Jiwa

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    Wednesday, 7 August 2013


    The birds are singing at 0540 this morning!
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    E'id for me this time around commemorates an understanding of humanity deeper than the pursuit of happiness

    E'id Mubarak to you

     
    I hope you had a fufilling Ramadhan.  My mother fasted on some days, too. She's under the weather, right now, but insists she is fine.


    It has been and continues to be very cold here in Nairobi, though, for us, at least.  We have coughs and colds and freezing knees.  I stopped fasting after Saida stopped school!  No point in getting mad and then regretting it especially during the fast - that in itself is hell which we are trying to avoid by practicing the fast!


    Though I stopped the food fast, I still learned a LOT during this Ramadhan: Most importantly, fasting is not just about stopping food (which I think I learnt by focusing my awareness on the things that happen when one does a food-fast ie stop food).  There is a reward to the practice and it is intrinsic - derived from the traditions, the gatherings, the change in attitudes, however temporary, and the diversion, even. 


    I haven't seen a change in members of my community, though, on the level of a search for greater ways of binding to one another on the basis of a higher standard of ethics.  We have no national history and the only things that bind us in Africa are marriage-and-business or trade or religious service or common enemies.  This pretence of brotherhood will not dissipate not even by the end of the lunar month, which is within a few hours, but the hypocrisy will remain like a brand that like cattle we are neither able to see nor be aware of.


    There are some dangerous things that happen when we don't fast 365 days.  I am not sure how to explain that kind of fast but here are examples: the politeness we have learnt from our colonial masters - that is often a form of fasting, for me, though its reach has tipped over the edge and can be converted into facetiousness and pretence, approaching hate; avoiding situations where one's own mental health would otherwise take a beating, like getting angry with a loved one or not having time or inclination to have a hug or a cuddle, I think; sacrificing one thing for something more important, the way mothers do, is also a form of fasting. 


    Saying sorry requires a form of fasting from pride.  This could be much more valuable than fasting from food and can be performed throughout the year.  Forgiveness and brotherhood are two sides of the same chapati.  They can make up for a lack of history and time-tested culture.


    However, holding back on consuming food instinctively and satisfying the senses (between the hours prescribed), if it can be done without damaging one's health (or someone else's), does help in slowing one down enough to feel that during the forced rest one only has two choices - to go blank (into passivity) or to do something active like offering a prayer and searching for, attempting to find the meaning of that elusive state we call taqwa.   [Prayer, here, includes intellectual striving, meditation, reflection, reading of texts, or anything sublime, thereby partaking of the thinnest air found in the attempt to attain spiritual heights that can trigger transcendence].  Taqwa is not bliss, mind you.  It is something like "a love experienced upon being touched by that which can only be touched if it touches you, first"; it is freedom from lust for sensuality, a freedom that lingers like freedom from hunger.  Perhaps it has an astringent taste like that of a toothbrush cut from an acacia tree.  Perhaps it's remembering to hold on to the reins of the camel even when one is overcome with slumber.


    We know that it is there - it is not just imaginary, if it requires the imagination to conceive of or trigger it - and it can speak to something about our humanity which is intangible.  Yet it hints of another existence or dimension, another world.  Imagination certainly has a role to play - Dr Azim Nanji revealed that in Miami in 1979, I remember.

     
    Perhaps every day of the year is potentially a day in Ramadhan or, at least, falls in a holy month of sorts, if we want it to, in our consciousness. We may have to rise above the host of judgmental ignorances that permeate our beings in order to live such a day, though.  We are created with too many blind spots.  The month - any month - can be meaningful.  The moon smiles at the beginning of the month, as Mohammed the Prophet has been reported to say.  It then smiles at the end of it, too.  There seems only one way to remove grief and that is to smile.  Behind such a smile there must be a fountain that springs from Taqwah.


    Prophet Mohammed - may the shining clarity of peace that he symbolises and represents be upon him and his physical and spiritual descendants, for his life is like the smoky perfume he loved to wear and may my love of writing bear witness to that.

     
    Fasting is a retreat - which very few are able to take refuge into everyday of the year.  I pray for humble, silent and striving believers who modestly hide from attention like woodlice, who peacefully and non-violently gather to preserve their enviable peace, every day of the year, a peace that has too often been touted as conspiracy by the media in the control of the war-mongers and arms manufacturers.


    I wish for the rest of us that we find the peace and solitude required to better understand deeper into the meaning of fasting, for us to retreat from the activity of the day and the madness of the season everyday, and trust that God's hand is resting over our abodes like a shade from inclement change in the climate.

     
    There are believers and non-believers in search of moments of retreat and eschewing the overfeeding of their senses, everyday, I am sure.  My experience of the west has been a spartan one at the best of times.  I have seen Islam being performed in life without it being called Islam, while I have witnessed hypocrisy under the name of Islam that is practiced religiously, which is very sad indeed. 


    When I was in the UK as a child, fasting was de rigueur for me, even in the silence of the snow that creaked underfoot just before sunrise, which lit up the woods reassuringly, in advance of Christmas, during late Advent.  Christmas was certainly a moment that could be celebrated like E'id, when presents were distributed merrily all round.  I have seen the stars shimmering and dilating during that season.  It was not a food fast but, for me it was a fast from other comforts, like warmth and proximity to home and family near the equator.


    Our vocabularies have become mixed up and now Christmas can be mistaken for arms sales, and Islam and E'id for... slaughter.  Our power to redefine it and hearken the original meaning has been robbed and we are now governed by the selective information we are now forced-fed, into a quandary of brainless activity in our search for restoration of that peace.  The illuminati meanwhile laugh at us with contempt.

     
    On Twitter I read a conversation about charity, just yesterday.  Someone suggested that charity is a bit like a "good cause".  There is a rationale on a national scale that legitimises the notion of the "good cause".  One contributes to a good cause when one knows that one's own circumstances are comparatively better than those of the majority.  Sometimes in the west subscription to the good cause perhaps ends where ones human rights have to be set aside for its sake, the greatest of these rights being the right to 'happiness'.  For, as I read in that conversation, charity in the name of good causes normally perpetuates the product of charity - be it for human or animal rights.  Perpetuating such situations, then, is to perpetuate suffering, the opposite of the purpose of life in the west which is, assumed in as a basic premise of the argument - happiness.  The products of marketing, I think, in the west are purposed for (a) wealth and (b) happiness.  People do not seem to be allowed to think further than this.


    I would ask, what is the relationship between a good cause and an ethic if happiness might be obtained without regard to ethics?  Are ethics relative, then?  Where should one draw the line between good and ethical and is it ethical to set aside happiness for the sake of a wider effect?  Is such a thought ethical and stupid?  Or is it ethical and good?  Or is it just plain foolish to begin such a thread?


    Of course, some people who call themselves Muslims have extended this argument to rather perverted interpretations of martyrdom and self-annihilation (suicide) for the 'good cause'.  In my Islam self-annihilation referred to the ashes of the soul (as in Rumi) and not directly of the body.  Crikey.  What happened?  Something that should not need to have been thus extrapolated went into warp drive.  It's enough to give one apnoea. 


    The overarching guideline of Islam that is found during Ramadhan is restraint, at least, for me.  I feel that this is the eye the needle through which the camel must pass to find the oasis.  Ramadhan is very well epitomised in the desert.
     

    I just read about atheists in Saudi Arabia today.  I commented that whatever set of rules one subscribes to, at bottom, each of us subscribes to them to fulfil an ulterior motive, whether we realise it or not (I submitted to this argument in 1973 by Dr A Esmail (a philosopher) and still haven't found a response to it).  Human beings are, by nature, self-centred. Those who strive to seek out ways to rise above that self-centredness are compelled to refer to a set of ethics, a medium, a mirror that reflects some clarity that resonates bodily and in the soul.  It can be Atheism, Mohammedanism, Islam, the Tao, or whatever.  [In Arabic striving is quite simply and directly translated as jihad, which is only a benign qualifying or adjectival noun, now, of course spun into a deadly weapon that disperses herds of sheep.]


    For me both atheism or religion and all beliefs between these poles are espoused to benefit from how they serve to enable us to intellectually search for meaning and experience, whether the fruits of that search are experienced as meaningful more at the spiritual or material level.  There is striving everywhere, to search for an abiding truth, a permanent berth in life and all of life's experience confirms that the material is qualified by values that are reflected as responses from the soul.  But there can be no atheism where there is a dearth of human comfort (poverty). It serves to enable one to live, to mediate one's quality of life.   It is an intellectual luxury that is born of choice.


    I have my set of ethics, too:  They comprise of being responsive, peaceful, non-violent, forgiving, doubtful of the supremacy of the human mind, diffident enough to accommodate an anchor of humility in ones daily life; a search for ethics that look to (and for) the best examples in the history of mankind is more likely to enable us to restore us to our peace and humanity in this deteriorating world than any other combination.

     
    I know from experience and failure that I have enough blind spots to realise that I could be talking right through my straw hat!  Okay, I concede.  But I am sure that today I am sad, yes, but I am not without a sense of heightened clarity about the direction and meaning of my existence, for which I am grateful and which I would not exchange for a state of ephemeral happiness, ever.
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