What happens when elephants listen to classic music ?

[exotix]

Today

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...appens-5886402

Elephants at the Pairi Daiza, a zoo and botanical garden in Belgium.

[waltky]

Killing elephants for China...

The war on elephants
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 - How the very existence of Africa's elephants is threatened by poachers, traffickers and Asia's appetite for ivory. The BBC's Africa correspondent Alastair Leithead travelled to DR Congo, Kenya and Namibia

Bloated and eerily upright the large adult elephant was still standing where it had been killed - just next to the stream - its face hacked off. It had been fleeing the carnage in the mud 100m or so away, where the remains of four other adults and one young elephant lay fallen and disfigured, their tusks and trunks all taken for ivory and meat. Like a macabre statue, this faceless animal stood as a landmark to the horrors of poaching, of the ivory trade, and of the mass slaughter of the last remaining elephants in central Africa.

Elephant carcass, Garamba National Park, DR Congo

The pilot of the light aircraft was out on a regular reconnaissance mission when circling vultures drew him to the scene. The armed rangers on patrol nearby hadn't heard the shots, so it was the scavengers feasting on the carcasses that had raised the alarm. Garamba, in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the oldest national parks in Africa, designated in 1938.

Elephant numbers in the Garamba National Park and hunting reserves

It covers 14,000 sq km (5,500 sq miles) dominated by savannah grasses, which when green and lush can reach 3m in height, enveloping the elephants and concealing them even from the air. It's tough going on foot with the criss-crossing streams that feed the great Congo River, punctuated by papyrus marsh, forest and scrub. The park was made a World Heritage Site in 1980 for its rare Northern White Rhinos, and with 22,000 elephants back then, they never seemed in danger.

But the last rhino was seen some years ago. Poaching has wiped them out, and now with 95% of the elephants gone, and the killing continuing week after week, these giants are going the same way. It's not a good neighbourhood for conservation. “This park has, to a very, very large extent been poached out by various armed groups,” says Erik Mararv, the 30-year-old African-born Swede who manages Garamba for the non-profit organisation, African Parks.

MORE

[waltky]

Elephant woman!...

US War Veteran Now Fighting to Save Africa's Elephants
9 Jun 2017 | A decorated war vet with two decades' experience in military intelligence is using her expertise to fight a different conflict.

A decorated U.S. war veteran with two decades' experience in military intelligence, Lt. Col. Faye Cuevas spent half her career providing intelligence support to U.S. counter-insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Now she is using her expertise to fight a different kind of conflict: the war on wildlife poaching. Calling herself "the accidental conservationist," Cuevas, an air force officer and a trained lawyer originally from Le Center, Minnesota, is not your typical wildlife enthusiast. She is determined to use her skills, honed in conflicts all over the world, to help save the planet's remaining wild elephants. "If you start to really untangle how poaching happens — how poachers are armed, how they're connected into larger networks and how those networks can move ivory and horn on a global scale, who protects them? Who provides logistics? — it resembles a war in anything but name," Cuevas said.

In the U.S. Air Force, Cuevas worked on America's controversial drone program, collecting intelligence on individuals and organizations identified as threats. "Getting left of boom" was the term used to predict and prevent the next bomb attack. Cuevas can pinpoint the moment she realized that she wanted to fight poaching. "The first time that I saw an elephant in the wild was in Amboseli National Park here in Kenya two years ago," she said. "It was life-changing." "At the current rate of elephant decline, my 6-year-old daughter won't have an opportunity to see an elephant in the wild before she's old enough to vote," she said. "Which just is unacceptable to me, because if that is the case then we have nothing to blame that on but human apathy and greed." She realized that she could use the "left of boom" concept to help wildlife rangers get "left of kill."

Faye Cuevas of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) explains some of the tactics used, at the headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service in Nairobi, Kenya

Enter tenBoma — or "10 homesteads" — which uses technology to pull together diverse sources of information, from rangers to conservation groups. She analyzes the data to "create value in information in ways that it rises to the level of intelligence." Together with the U.S.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cuevas introduced a smartphone-based software app that allows rangers and field investigators to enter and share information immediately, rather than write it up in reports at the end of a day's patrolling. "The Kenya Wildlife Service and other many conservation groups are doing fantastic conservation work," Cuevas said. "However, the reality is that there are other challenges — from a cyber perspective, from a global criminal network perspective — that really necessitate security approaches integrated into conservation strategies." The number of Africa's savannah elephants had dropped to about 350,000 by 2014 because of poaching, according to a recent study.

MORE

[Bo-4]

Vid missing but check these out!





Apparently they enjoy a little Boogie Woogie too!