#'Climate Smart'Agriculture Is Blossoming (Op-Ed) David Cleary Director of Agriculture at The Nature Conservancy contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices:
Op-Ed & Insights. In a somber scene-setter for the climate summit in New york this week the World meteorological organization the United Nation's meteorological office released a report showing that world carbon emissions in 2013 reached a record high and atmospheric
carbon is increasing at the fastest rate seen in more than thirty years. Some hard questions face the international order which has spent much of that period in an interminable round of meetings meant to combat climate change.
Against that backdrop the pertinent question the UN report raises is: Why bother? If we appear to be losing the battle
and working to save the world's threatened elephants Sonja Van Tichelen European Regional Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare said in a statement.
Rampant ivory poaching is causing precipitous declines in elephant populations and the Wildlife Conservation Society estimates that 96 elephants are killed each day by poachers in Africa.
The ivory trade was banned in 1989 but the demand for ivory now is higher than ever
Not only are we losing an elephant every 15 minutes but the ivory trade is undercutting law
and order in elephant range states and enriching organized crime syndicates the slaughter of elephants must be stopped Van Tichelen said.
Belgium is set to join several other countries that recently destroyed their stockpiles of ivory. In February France crushed more than 15000 pieces of ivory
Recently officials with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development of Vietnam announced they are considering crushing the country's stores of rhino horn elephant ivory and tiger bone.
Is a Rhino Hunt Really Conservation?(Op-Ed) Indeed Ahimbisibwe is now a leader in her community.
when the archaeologists discovered a broken hippo hip. In ancient Egypt hippos were considered nuisances as the animals ate crops at night.
The young troops go out and they harpoon them and spear them he told the Toronto audience.
and bound hippo is harpooned to death. This ritual could have taken place at Giza at a public place such as the harbor the hippo meat (apparently quite tasty) being consumed afterwards by the troops in the galleries.
These troops didn't always get the best food. The hippo meat would have been a nice respite from their everyday diet.
The bones the archaeologists found in the galleries indicate they consumed lots of goat and sheep as well as oily bony catfish said Richard Redding chief research officer at Ancient Egypt Research Associates in another symposium presentation.
While most woolly mammoths died out in Siberia about 10000 years ago dwarf mammoths survived in Wrangel Island until 3700 years ago.
And yet a large black market for ivory still thrives fueling elephant poaching in Africa. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has estimated that some 96 elephants are killed each day on average mostly for their ivory.
As Hong kong is a major transit point for ivory headed to China conservation groups lauded the decision.
The African Wildlife Foundation's CEO Patrick Bergin also said that by incinerating its stockpile Hong kong will raise awareness that owning ivory has a dark side one that is connected to wholesale elephant slaughter civil unrest terrorism and a complex supply
These two reserves contain the Big five#African lion African elephant Cape buffalo African leopard and White or Black rhinoceros and are viewed as a safe haven for brown hyaena.
Surrounding these two protected areas is unprotected farmland where a mixture of game livestock and agricultural farming take place
In 1903 Thomas Edison demonstrated the power of electricity by attaching wires to Topsy the Elephant then throwing the switch
Nature Newstop elephant scientists are up in arms over the prospect of elephant-poaching hot spots in Africa being allowed to sell off their ivory stockpiles.
Despite the two nations'poor track records in elephant protection, conservationists are worried that the proposals could be accepted because of an ongoing CITES debate over how best to manage elephant populations.
and more than 20 other elephant researchers argue for a bigger role for science in CITES decisions about elephant conservation.
Some countries'elephant-monitoring data is not publicly available until the CITES meetings are in session,
In their petitions, Zambia and Tanzania both state that their elephant populations are healthy and growing.
They say that downgrading the endangered status of their elephants to allow the sale of ivory,
will actually help to protect elephant populations by providing authorities in the countries with cash to put appropriate measures in place.
But scientists are wary about the elephant numbers being quoted by Tanzania and Zambia. Wasser says DNA analyses of major ivory seizures have shown that several tonnes of ivory intercepted in Asia during the past few years originated in the two countries2.
Several other scientists working in the region have misgivings about the accuracy of Tanzania's latest elephant census last year.
and peer review, says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, a nonprofit organization that is headquartered in London but works mainly in Kenya.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) shares three distinct populations of elephants with the Tanzania National parks,
In January, Kenya led the African elephant Coalition a group of more than 20 African nations opposed to the ivory trade in meetings in Brussels to lobby the European union against the Tanzanian and Zambian proposals.
But that fact means ancient RNA might not be very useful for studying ancient animals such as mammoths.
African elephants are two distinct species: Nature Newsafrican forest-dwelling elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are a separate species from those living in the African savanna (Loxodonta africana),
researchers have shown. Scientists have debated long whether African elephants belong to the same or different species. They look very different,
with the savanna elephant weighing around 7 tonnes roughly double the weight of the forest elephant.
But studies had suggested they were the same species DNA in mitochondria (the cell's energy factories) from African elephants found evidence of interbreeding between forest and savanna elephants around 500,000 years ago2.
Now a group of scientists have taken a deeper look at the African elephants'genetic ancestry. The researchers sequenced the nuclear genomes of both types of African elephant
as well as that of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). ) They also extracted and sequenced DNA from the extinct woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and mastodon (Mammut americanum) ancient elephant ancestors.
By comparing all these genomes, the team found that the forest and savanna elephants diverged into separate species between 2. 6 and 5. 6 million years ago.
The study is published online in the journal Plos Biology1. They split about the same time as African and Asian elephants split into separate species,
and much longer ago than people previously thought, says David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical school in Boston,
Massachusetts, and a lead author on the study. You can no more call African elephants the same species as you can Asian elephants and the mammoth,
he adds. Most researchers agree that the Asian elephant and the mammoth are separate species,
says Thomas Gilbert, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen. But this study really hammers the coffin shut on any arguments that the forest
and savannah are anything but different species, or even genera, he says. MITOCHONDRIAL DNA can only give researchers information on maternal ancestry,
as this genetic material is inherited solely from the mother. Examining the nuclear genome which is around 200,000 times larger than that contained in mitochondria,
gives a broader and more accurate picture of elephants'history. You get a different picture by looking at nuclear DNA,
and savanna elephants interbred recently and had shared a recent female ancestor can be explained as a result of the female elephant's social behaviour,
the researchers say. Females tend to stay close to their place of birth, while the males roam. Herds of female forest elephants could have repeatedly come into contact
and bred with migrating male savanna elephants. Over a long period of time the forest elephant gene pool would become diluted
and displaced by that of the savanna elephants, but the forest DNA would be conserved in the MITOCHONDRIAL DNA,
which is passed on through the female line. What we see is an ancient split with a bit of gene flow more recently,
he says. Hybridization happens between closely related animals and does not necessarily imply that the two are the same species,
The authors suggest that the findings will help to reprioritize elephant conservation programmes. All African elephants are conserved currently as the same species
. But the evidence that they are two distinct species suggests that they may be facing different pressures
The forest elephants should become a greater conservation priority, the study says.
Tide turns against corn ethanol: Nature Newsbuffeted by the economic crisis and a drop in the oil price,
and put the fish on a par with other long-distance seed movers of the animal world African hornbills and Asian elephants.
How mammoths lost the extinction lottery: Nature Newswoolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and other large animals driven to extinction
since the last ice age each succumbed to a different lethal mix of circumstances. This conclusion the result of a huge analysis of fossils, climate records and DNA hints that it could be more difficult than thought to identify the species at greatest risk of disappearing today.
we would have woolly mammoths and no reindeer, so Santa would drag his sleigh with woolly mammoths.
Fifty thousand years ago, no fewer than 150 genera of large animals roamed the planet,
including woolly mammoths, giant sloths and cave bears. Within 40 000 years two-thirds of them were gone.
For a more consistent picture, he and his colleagues charted the population dynamics of woolly mammoths
woolly rhinos, wild horses, reindeer, steppe bison and musk ox. The researchers created a series of snapshots of the European,
As the climate subsequently warmed, woolly rhinos woolly mammoths and the Eurasian populations of musk oxen went extinct as populations became more and more isolated from one another.
But these extinctions happened thousands of years apart, and the animals'ranges changed in different ways.
For instance, woolly rhinos roamed much of Europe and Asia until their extinction around 14,000 years ago,
whereas the mammoths'range inched northward until they disappeared around 4, 000 years ago. Humans are off the hook for some extirpations,
And woolly mammoths reproduced slowly, whereas reindeer are more fecund, almost like a rodent, she says.
what happened to the mammoth, he says. But when we think about species today, megafauna represent a minute fraction of the fauna we have.
and African elephant poaching levels are at their highest for a decade, according to a 21 june report from the United nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
5 11 october 2012photas/TASS/PAMAMMOTH unearthed from Siberian mud A remarkably well-preserved 30,000-year-old mammoth was revealed on 4 october,
Maurice Leponce, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesthe male elephant scarab beetle, Megasoma elephas fights for females and food with a formidable horn.
Massive Malaysian ivory cache seizedit has been reported widely this week that Malaysian authorities have confiscated 24 tonnes of elephant ivory.
Data from ETIS, compiled by TRAFFIC on behalf of Parties to CITESTHE Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has banned trading in elephant ivory since 1989, apart from in specific circumstances,
According to data from the CITES Elephant Trade Information system the year 2011 broke all previous records, with 39 tonnes intercepted (see graph.
an elephant specialist at the environmental group WWF, seems to be a growing demand for ivory in Asia.
because that country is believed to have a very small population of remaining elephants. To trace tusks back to their origin,
director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, has built a map of elephant DNA obtained from faeces samples from across Africa.
Most biologists consider African elephants to include at least two species the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis.
The red list of threatened species, drawn up by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, lists African elephants as vulnerable."
That means there are a lot of elephants disappearing
Art of cheese-making is 7, 500 years oldtraces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7, 500 years.
the group of African mammals that includes elephants and aardvarks, evolved from ancestors in North
A similar bid by scientists in South korea to revive the woolly mammoth an even more scientifically challenging feat
and finally grows into a mammoth, however, is a process still beyond even the most advanced genetic science.
There is also the mammoth challenge of restoring the world or at least the ecosystems that the elephant relatives inhabited, among other hurdles.
And given the perilous plight of still extant elephant species, humanity has yet to show that it can manage the survival, let alone the revival, of a pachyderm.
Still, there are lessons to be learned from the mammoth, not least the importance of cold. The Arctic is the best place for the long-term preservation of DNA,
Shapiro said. It's cold and it's been cold for at least the last million years.
At this moment, brave conservationists are risking their lives to protect forest elephants from armed poachers, noted biologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers University at TEDX.
And we're talking in this safe auditorium about bringing back the woolly mammoth
Wildlife trade meeting endorses DNA testing of seized ivoryif you go into a bar in Bangkok tonight,
and plants has bolstered protection for a number of species. Besides agreeing to clamp down more strongly on the trade in ivory and rhino horn,
researchers across the world had warned of the dire state of African elephant populations, which are currently being decimated by rampant poaching.
UK and has been involved heavily in the debates about elephant poaching, said,"I think this is one of the best COPS
says Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the driving forces behind the push for forensic examinations of elephant ivory.
UK and the founder of the charity Save the Elephants, based in Nairobi.""For the first time in 22 years there was no proposal to sell ivory.
Enforcement of rhino protection is also to be strengthened, with Mozambique and Vietnam now required to toughen up their controls on trade in horns.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013essence of elephants'by Greg du Toit depicts the animals at night.
This photo, entitled'Essence of Elephants',was the winner of the exhibition's Animal Portraits award.
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Ivory trash'by Brent Stirton, a Kenyan ranger inspects elephants killed by poachers.
Listening to Africa s elephantslast week, audio from the Elephant Listening Project was released, featuring the actual moment an elephant was killed by poachers (see video).
The low-frequency recording, which sounds almost abstract, was captured by some of the special microphones set up by the project in the forests of Gabon and the Republic of congo.
The aim is to monitor the sounds that forest elephants use to communicate, which humans can sometimes feel
Behavioural ecologist Peter Wrege directs the Elephant Listening Project. Nature interviewed behavioural ecologist Peter Wrege of the The Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york,
For example, other than counting dung piles along a transect to try to estimate population density, the only typical method of collecting data on forest elephants is by direct observation at clearings in the forest, measuring
Although some of these measurements can't be made just from acoustic records at least not yet relative numbers of elephants
Nations fight back on ivorymy impression is that the situation is very bad for forest elephants.
we think that forest elephants are taking the brunt of ivory poaching more and more. Rainforests are difficult places to patrol
I would say that all populations of forest elephants are in deep trouble, and the ones most at risk are those at the edges of their current range in Cameroon and the Central african republic.
where once more than 60%of all forest elephants lived. I believe there are some fronts where science can be a big help.
As populations of elephants decline, we need to be able to predict where they are going to be
whether they are aware that more money has been flowing in to protect elephants. They will look at you like you are crazy.
Nations fight back on ivoryit has been a bad year for Africa s elephants. Thousands have been killed as poachers rush to cash in on soaring ivory prices,
Official numbers for elephant killings in 2013 are still being prepared, but researchers told Nature that it is likely to be a near-record year.
And figures for ivory hauls in media reports collected each month by conservation group Save the Elephants,
chair of the elephant specialist group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
He estimates that around 50,000 elephants were killed in 2011, given the amount of ivory seized,
Figures from TRAFFIC and Save the Elephants suggest that between 25,000 and 35,000 of the animals are killed each year.
traffic/Elephant Trade Info system/cites"Those numbers may be off by some margin. But based on the number of recent seizures, the elephants are being killed at their highest rate yet,
says Wasser, who estimates from news reports that 38 Â tonnes of ivory have been seized this year.
Using sound to combat elephant poacherssome positive outcomes from the CITES meeting are already being seen on the ground,
and Wildlife Service will destroy its stockpile of contraband elephant ivory on 14 Â November, officials announced last week.
showing the country s intention to thwart a worrying rise in elephant poaching (see Nature 503,452;
On 11 Â February, the United states also announced a domestic ban on selling African elephant ivory.
More than 20,000 elephants and 1, 000 Â rhinoceroses were poached in the past year in Africa. See go. nature. com/qjupqc for more.
With more than 20,000 elephants and 1, 000 rhinos poached in the past year in Africa, and an estimated global illegal trade in wildlife products of US$20 billion a year a figure that does not include timber
pledged to strengthen their legislation to ensure that the trade of wildlife is regarded as a serious crime a technical definition under United nations rules that should ensure tougher penalties for those convicted of dealing in elephant ivory, rhino horn and other animal products.
and to support an existing ban on international trade in elephant ivory. At a press conference, UK foreign secretary William Hague said that the meeting"will turn out to have been a historic conference and a turning point.
The country has pushed previously to allow one-off legal sales of elephant ivory something that many scientists believe could further fuel demand and hence poaching.
The surge in elephant and rhino poaching in the past few years is believed widely to have been driven by the growing economies in the far east, especially China,
which two men were caught with around half a million euros'(US$680, 000) worth of rhino horn, yet each received fines of just  500.
A panda costs on average 5 times more than an elephant. Imagine what a zoo could do just
Elephants are considered ugly by many people yet many are against killing them for their tusks.
I have heard never of anyone calling sharks and elephants.**plus I have heard never of anyone calling sharks
and elephants ugly stupid typos@Smokeymcrib My mistake then also you may not have heard of sharks/elephants being called ugly but
Simply google searching Elephants are ugly/why are elephants so ugly? brings up some not so nice results etc.
or Wooly Mammoth both being worked on today. Both expected to eventually work. Also keep in mind that pigs may soon produce custom human pancreases in the near future other organs to follow.
Or Illegalone way poachers get the big elephants they want is by shooting a baby elephant first.
which elephants and every other living creature on earth incorporated into their bodies in unusually high levels during the Cold War era.
whether a piece of ivory comes from an elephant that died before or after the United nations banned products made from elephant parts in 1989.
The tool's creators hope it will help officials prosecute those who harvest and sell ivory illegally.
In spite of the international ban poachers kill about 25000 elephants each year according to the conservation groups. About 423000 African elephants live in the wild today according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's estimates.
The tool also works for determining the age and thus the legal status of rhinoceros horns
which are poached because some Asian customers believe they cure a variety of ailments. The belief comes from traditional Chinese medicine NPR reports
although China removed references to rhino horns from traditional medical books after banning the trade in 1993.
The ivory group tested many animal tissues this way including hippopotamus teeth elephant tail hairs and blue monkey hairs in addition to elephant tusks and rhino horns.
if there's a caliber for killing lion elephant and cape buffalo there's one for Ms. Piggy.
That's elephant caliber. It's intended especially for wild hogs. 2 shots not one.
-and presto chango-ones goes from an amoeba to an elephant. well cool beans. But Even Darwin lost sleep over this.
Maybe you could also explain what happened to the large Woolly mammoth population that existed in North america thousands of years ago.
You can say elephants walking amplifies an earthquake but by how much???The fact is that we are in a natural warming cycle...
anything inherently dangerous which includes venomous animals (snakes lizards) huge animals (hippos elephants) and animals that would prefer to murder you than let you pat them on the head (big cats bears baboons) are outlawed all.
Where is my miniature pet elephant? Its simple animal breeding anyone can do. We should have domesticated versions of all wild animals by now.
#Using DNA Forensics To Track Elephant Poachersthe shocking news that Satao the much-loved African elephant who lived in Kenya s Tsavo East National park has been killed
and butchered for his tusks highlights once again the terrible and unsustainable toll of poaching elephants for their ivory.
Satao s death is just one among the many thousands of elephants killed each year. The Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants programme part of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) set up as part of the worldwide ban in 1989 reported that 22000 African elephants
were killed illegally by poachers in 2012 based on data from 27 countries across Africa. The figures for 2013 reported this month show a toll of over 20000 African elephants the vast majority of seizures by customs
or border officials being made in Tanzania Kenya and Uganda. The CITES report reveals that while the numbers of elephants poached appears to have stabilised among large seizures of more than 500kg the number of tusks found in each seizure is rising.
This suggests two things: that there are fewer elephants to poach and that the trade is organised well and not the work of individual poachers or small groups.
This level of slaughter far exceeds the reproductive potential of the remaining elephants and will by any account lead to the extinction of the African elephant in many parts of the continent.
The international community is only now responding to this crisis for the African elephant with action.
Knowing which populations the poachers are targeting can play an important part. Work pioneered by Professor Sam Wasser at the University of Washington uses DNA profiling from seized ivory to trace it back to the geographical location within Africa from which the ivory was taken once roamed.
There are two species of elephant in Africa the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis.
Within these two species are many subpopulations such as extended family groups where there is a greater sharing of DNA types due to inheritance from common ancestors.
Under CITES there is a total ban on the trade in elephant ivory although not from all other species that have ivory nor from tusks removed from mammoths being extinct they cannot be provided any legal protection.
The cost of mammoth ivory is approximately US$350 per kilogramme significantly cheaper than elephant ivory but often looks very similar.
Again DNA typing can distinguish between African and Asian elephants and mammoths. This aspect of wildlife forensic science is supported by the United nations Office for Drugs
and Crime and has already proved highly successful in tracking seizures and locating their source.
For example when a 6. 5 tonne shipment was seized in Singapore DNA testing revealed it had come from elephant populations in Zambia.
If nations wish to save the African elephant then action to provide and fund the tools necessary is required.
And as ivory becomes rare due to the alarming decrease in elephant numbers the concurrent increase in value will put ever more pressure on the dwindling elephant populations.
and wildlife campaigners would raise awareness within China of the dramatic scale of elephant poaching the New york times reported:
n Samper president and chief executive of the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement that the society congratulated the Chinese government for showing the world that elephant poaching
and that elephants will once again flourish. Patrick Bergin chief executive of the African Wildlife Foundation described the event as a courageous and critical first step by China to elevate the important issue of wildlife trafficking
and elephant poaching among its citizens and around the world. While the United states crushed nearly all of the ivory in its possession China's stockpile likely exceeds 45 tons of ivory the World Conservation Society estimated i
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