One of the worst droughts in living memory is killing elephants and other wildlife in Kenya's Amboseli National Park and surrounding ecosystem, exacerbating a situation already critical because of a surge in ivory poaching.

Amboseli Trust for Elephants Program Director and noted elephant researcher Cynthia Moss posted an anguished account on her blog about this yesterday. Elephants she has known for decades are succumbing to the lack of water and food.

Funds are needed urgently to step up measures against poachers.

We are losing old friends in Amboseli.

Amboseli is experiencing the worst drought in decades.

The Maasai elders say it is the most severe drought since 1961 when they lost almost all their cattle.

I have been through two previous bad years: 1976 and 1984. By the end of 1976, 68 elephants had died, many from the drought, others from the competition and conflict caused by the drought, and still others from poaching. During 1984, 70 elephants died, most from the same three causes.

Ulla

There is a pattern in the deaths due to drought. Young calves under three months old die, probably because their mothers do not have enough milk or rich enough milk.

Then older calves 8-12 months old die towards the end of the dry season in September and October when they should be supplementing milk with vegetation.

There is simply nothing for them to eat and their mother's milk is not enough.

Calves 4-5 years old also die. These have been weaned and also cannot find enough vegetation to sustain them.

Once an elephant is over five it seemed to be able to get through the droughts.

Unless elephants are speared or poached they tend not to die as adults until they are in their 50s or 60s.

The adults that suffer particularly during droughts are the old females. Their teeth are worn down and they cannot find enough food that they can process.

Losing these old matriarchs and other big females is by far the hardest thing I have had to deal with over my 37 years in Amboseli.

Grace, Odile and Ebenezer

Now at the end of July 2009 after three years of low rainfall and an almost total failure of the rains this year, there is very little vegetation for the animals to eat. There is still water in Amboseli. The springs fed from Kilimanjaro continue to flow into the swamps, but the vegetation in the swamps has been eaten down to almost nothing and in any case what there is is not very nutritious.

Animals are dying everywhere: zebras, wildebeests, buffaloes, hippos and elephants. It is very depressing and frustrating standing by and watching this tragedy unfold.

There is nothing we can do and we feel so helpless.

Even if it was a policy to feed wild animals during droughts, there is not enough hay in all of Kenya to feed the wildlife for even a week. We try to tell ourselves it is a natural phenomenon, but it doesn't stop the pain of watching the animals suffer.

During 2008, 137 calves were born which broke all previous records for annual births. So far in 2009, another 53 calves have been born.

We fear that most of these calves will die. A minimum of 30 young calves have died.

This is just the beginning of August; it won't rain until late October or early November so there is three more months to go and we have to face the fact that many of the remaining calves will also die. It won't be until it rains again and the families come back into the Park that we will know the total loss.

"I am losing some of my old friends whom I've known for 36-37 years."

In the meantime, I am losing some of my old friends whom I've known for 36-37 years.

So far the matriarchs who have died over the last year are: Echo, Grace, Isis, Leticia, Lucia, Odile, Ulla and Xenia.

Echo, Freda, Isis, Leticia and Ulla had been the matriarchs of their families since the 1970s and some from even earlier. Their families must be very distraught and confused. Personally I will miss them terribly. They have been a part of my life for so long.

Older males are also dying but not from the drought. They are being poached for their tusks.

Just in the last 10 days three more big males have been killed.

One, Ebenezer, had his tusks cut out with a power saw.

The poachers are definitely getting more serious. We are doing everything we can by working closely with the Kenya Wildlife Service and providing support to the Amboseli-Tsavo Game Scouts Association.

On Thursday, at a special ceremony, Soila and Harvey, representing ATE, presented a motorbike, tents, rations, and money for vehicle repairs and running to the Scouts. We were able to give this support thanks to a generous donation from the Elephant Sanctuary.

We need more help.

The day of the presentation the scouts set up two anti-poaching camps, but there is need for another.

It is our estimate that it will cost about $10,000 to set up and run one of these camps. If any of you can help it will be greatly appreciated and I believe it will save elephant lives.

Cynthia Moss

For more information and to learn how you can help, visit the ATE Web site >>>

The largest illegal ivory market in Asia--much of it poached from elephants in Africa--continues to thrive in Thailand, according to the latest market surveys by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. 
 

Photo of ivory Buddhas by Daniel Stiles/TRAFFIC

The organization also raises concerns that legal provisions in Thailand governing trade in domesticated elephants are providing cover for illegal trade in wild-caught, highly-endangered Asian elephants from both Thailand and neighboring Myanmar.

TRAFFIC, a partnership of WWF and IUCN, oversees a global monitoring program, the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

CITES is an international agreement between governments that aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Thailand Signed Treaty Regulating Willdife Trade

Thailand is one of 175 countries that is party to the agreement.

But surveys documented more than 26,000 worked ivory products for sale in local Thailand markets, "with many more retail outlets dealing in ivory products than were observed during market surveys carried out in 2001," the network TRAFFIC in a statement.

"Market surveys found 50 more retail outlets offering ivory items in Bangkok and Chiang Mai in 2008 than the previous year. However, overall there was less worked ivory openly on sale than in 2001," the report noted.

"Thailand has consistently been identified as one of the world's top five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade, but shows little sign of addressing outstanding issues," said Tom Milliken, of TRAFFIC.

"Thailand needs to reassess its policy for controlling its local ivory markets as currently it is not implementing international requirements to the ongoing detriment of both African and Asian Elephant populations," Milliken said.

"Since 2004, the Thai government has only reported two ivory seizure cases totaling 1.2 tonnes of raw ivory."

Bangkok is the Hub

Thailand's capital, Bangkok, a major tourist destination, has emerged as the main hub for illegal ivory activities, accounting for over 70 percent of the retail outlets in Thailand offering ivory items for sale, TRAFFIC said.

The report includes new information on ivory workshops--eight in Uthai Thani, one each in Chai Nat and Payuha Kiri, and three in Bangkok--"between them employing dozens of carvers in the production of ivory jewelry, belt buckles and knife-handles."

Photo of ivory factory in Uthai Thani by Danile Stiles/TRAFFIC

Much of the ivory being worked is illegally imported from Africa, TRAFFIC said.

"Some workshop owners boasted close ties with European knife makers, while others reported sending ivory, steel and silver items to the U.S. for sale in gun shops."

"The Thai Government needs to crack down on this serious illegal activity and stop allowing people to abuse the law," said Colman O'Criodain, WWF International's analyst on wildlife trade issues.

"A good first step would be to put in place a comprehensive registration system for all ivory in trade and for live elephants."

"Traders [are] buying wild-caught elephant calves for use in Bangkok as 'beggars.'"

The study also uncovered reports of traders buying wild-caught elephant calves for use in Bangkok as "beggars" on the streets in major tourist centres, or selling them to elephant camps and entertainment parks, TRAFFIC said.

"Hundreds of live elephants are known to have been illegally imported from Myanmar in recent years, to be sold to elephant trekking companies catering to adventure tourism in Thailand.

"The capture of wild elephants has been banned in Thailand since the 1970s, but such trade usually goes undetected because domesticated elephants do not have to be registered legally until they are eight years of age." 

The study also found that over a quarter of all live elephant exports from Thailand between 1980 and 2005 could have been illegal due to incomplete and inaccurate declarations made on the documentation required under CITES.

"There must be greater scrutiny of the live elephant trade if enforcement efforts are to have any impact at all," said Chris R. Shepherd, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia's Acting Director.

"Thailand and Myanmar should work together, and with urgency, to address cross-border trade problems," he added.

More about the ivory wars >>

NGS photo by Jodi Cobb

A fence made out of beehives wired together has been shown to significantly reduce crop raids by elephants, Oxford University scientists reported today.

"Our previous research has shown that elephants are scared away by recordings of the buzzing of angry bees," said Lucy King of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, who led the project in collaboration with the charity Save the Elephants. "We designed the beehive fence as an affordable and practical way of applying this knowledge to create a barrier that the elephants would be afraid to cross."

Member of the construction team with the beehive fence built for the pilot study.
Photo courtesy OU/Lucy King

The fence is constructed of log beehives suspended on poles beneath tiny thatched roofs (to keep off the sun). The hives are connected by 26-foot (8-meter) lengths of fencing wire. "Elephants avoid the hives and will attempt to push through the wire, but this causes the hives to swing violently causing the elephants to fear an attack of angry bees," says a statement issued by Oxford University.

The results of a pilot study in Kenya, published in the African Journal of Ecology, show that a farm protected by the beehive fence had 86 per cent fewer successful crop raids by elephants and significantly fewer raiding elephants than a control farm without the fence, Oxford said.

Local farmers with the beehive fence.
Photo courtesy OU/Lucy King

"The reduction occurred despite the fact that none of the hives were occupied at the time, suggesting that elephants remember painful past encounters with African honeybees and avoid the sights and smells associated with them."

   "Despite their thick hides, adult   elephants can be stung around their eyes or up their trunks."

Despite their thick hides adult elephants can be stung around their eyes or up their trunks, whilst calves could potentially be killed by a swarm of stinging bees as they have yet to develop this thick protective skin, Oxford said.

Earlier work by Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Fritz Vollrath--who also cotributed to Lucy King's study--had suggested that elephants prefer to steer clear of beehives.

In a 2007 study Lucy King tested the response of known elephants to the buzz of disturbed local African bees recorded digitally. Sixteen of the 17 family groups that were tested during their noon time nap left their resting places under trees within 80 seconds of hearing the bee sound coming from a speaker ten yards away.

"Significantly, eight of the groups fled within just ten seconds of hearing the bees whilst not one of the groups that heard the control sound of natural white noise moved that fast," Oxford University said.

Crop-raiding bull elephant "Genghis Khan" (right) with GPS tracking collar visible at the back of his head.
Photo courtesy OU/Lucy King

During the six-week pilot study of the efficacy of a beehive fence, the team used GPS to track one particularly notorious elephant raider dubbed "Genghis Khan." The bull elephant was spotted raiding by several farmers and was observed among a herd of 18 bulls returning from crop raids, and his GPS movements were shown to closely match the routes of the raiding groups, Oxford said.

The reaction from the farmers involved in the pilot study has been very positive," King said. "Our beehive fence design has been shown to be robust enough to survive elephant raids and cheap enough for farmers to construct themselves--especially as it also gives protection against cattle rustlers and, when occupied by colonies of African honeybees, will give the farmers two or three honey harvests a year that they can sell to offset the cost of building the fence."

Said Lucy King, "We hope that these results will encourage farmers in other areas losing crops to elephant raiders to build their own beehive fences and help to reduce the conflict between humans and elephants that can lead to the tragedy of animals being shot, as well as farmers suffering devastating losses to the crops that are their livelihood.'"

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

The future of a rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is under threat from one of the worst droughts in living memory, according to Save the Elephants, a conservation organization based in Kenya.

Water levels are extremely low in the African desert country's Gourma region due to uneven rainfall in 2008. The most important lake, Banzena, is the lowest it has been since 1983 when it dried completely.

Adult elephants go on their knees to stretch for water deep under the sand. Baby elephants who can't reach the water are dying of thirst.

"Urgent action is now needed to secure water for the elephants until the rains commence as predicted in early June," Save the Elephants said in a news statement. "Fortunately, two pumps already exist at Banzena for pumping water and can be used for helping the elephants.

"Save the Elephants, in partnership with the WILD Foundation and the Mali government, is appealing for funds for diesel necessary for their operation."

The situation is equally dire for the Touareg and Pheul herdsmen who rely on Lake Banzena for their cattle and many cows are now dying each day from lack of water and the soaring temperatures which reach 50 degrees Celsius in the shade, says Jake Wall, a Save the Elephants researcher who returned recently from a visit to the area.

"The stench of rotting corpses fills the air and what little water remains is putrid and undrinkable by all standards. The normal peaceful coexistence between the elephants and herdsmen is starting to break down and giving way to conflict over access to water."

Even if help comes, it is not certain whether the water quantity will be sufficient and close monitoring of the situation is needed, Save the Elephants said.

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

"The 350 to 450 elephants of Gourma, the northernmost herds still alive in Africa, are being forced to trek ever-longer distances within the Sahel on the fringes of the Sahara to find scarce water.

"Juveniles are likely to be among the worst affected, as--unlike the bigger bulls--their trunks are not long enough to reach deep into remaining wells.

"Six elephants have already been found dead. Four others, including three calves, were recently extracted from a shallow well into which they had fallen when searching for water. Only the largest survived."

Elephants On Their Knees

At a dry lake bed 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the east of Banzena, six bull elephants are surviving by getting on their knees and reaching with their trunks for water that is 10 feet (3 meters) beneath ground level and through a hole dug by the Touareg.

Younger elephants who are not as big or as skilled cannot possibly reach these to hard-to-get-at water points, Save the Elephants said in its statement. "The long distances, high temperatures and weakened condition will also take a heavy toll on the younger elephants."

The desert elephants of Mali live in the Gourma district southeast of Timbuktu. They have adapted to survive in the harsh conditions of the Sahel by migrating long distances in search of water and food but live on the margin of what is ecologically viable.

 View a larger file of this interactive map.

The ancient elephant migration routes in Mali, Africa, were tracked by satellite by Iain Douglas-Hamilton. Read the story that goes with this map.

Map by NGS

Save the Elephants and the WILD Foundation have been monitoring these last rare desert elephants in Mali in collaboration with the Malian Environment Ministry directorate for conservation--Direction Nationale de la Conservation de la Nature (DNCN).

"This unique herd of elephants is now in a desperate situation due to a drastic shortage of water, and we are launching an emergency appeal to save them," Save the Elephants said.

Photo courtesy Save the Elephants

This photo of a buffalo herd in Zakouma National Park was used to determine that there are exactly 794 animals in the herd. Photo mosaics made by Mike Fay and his team of conservationists allow them to make an accurate assessment of the types and numbers of animals in the sanctuary.

Photo courtesy Mike Fay

On the final day of an aerial survey of Zakouma National Park in Chad, central Africa, a team of conservationists led by J. Michael Fay spotted and photographed several herds of elephants. The animals will be carefully counted on photographs taken by the team and follow-up flights will be made for clarifications.

Texas-size Zakouma park is on the frontline of central Africa's ivory wars. Once a haven for hundreds of thousands of elephants, the reserve has been the target of rampant poaching that has reduced the elephant population to fewer than a thousand animals. Elephants could vanish from the park within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, made headlines in 2006 -- the last year the park's elephants were counted officially -- when he found evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma's boundaries.

Once the final number of the current survey is in, Fay will share his thoughts about the status of Zakouma's embattled elephants. "I have been at this battle for almost 30 years and this is the last stand," he writes in this blog entry.

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 5: March 8, 2009

The bronchitis is still with me, but I kind of feel like my body is winning at this point

We have been seeing millions of quelea birds along the river near camp here going to their roosts in the evening -- amazing site.

Today is the final day of the survey. We were going to try find and then decipher that big herd of elephants [seen on the previous day] before we embarked on our survey lines.

NGS photo of Zakouma elephants in 2007 by Michael Nichols

We got to about 3 km north of the airstrip and we could already see a few small herds milling around the waterhole just to the east of the road, so in the block that we surveyed yesterday.

One herd of 20 was headed south and another bigger group north.

On the west side of the road was the vast majority of the group.

We flew over one group that was probably a total of about 150 individuals. We took photos.

We took a few long loops to the east of the road down to Rigueik to see if there were elephants headed south. We saw none so we assumed that the vast majority of elephants were in the block to be surveyed today and broke to start transects on the south end of the block.

To the south of the block we started to record large numbers of giraffe, some good sized herds of buffalo and the normal mix of antelopes, warthogs, ostrich and the ubiquitous elephant carcasses. It seemed that for all species except for elephants we were doing quite well.

NGS photo of Zakouma elephants in 2007 by Michael Nichols 

We started hitting elephants about half way up in the block. They were north of where we had seen them in the morning and on the move. This was a herd of about 80 or so.

There would be more further to the north.

Two transects later we hit another group of 80 or so.

And some transects north of that we hit the big group.

There were small groups huddled under about 10 acacia trees in a row. We estimated the number at some hundreds.

It seems with elephants you always overestimate a bit and with buffalo you underestimate.

NGS photo of elephants in Zakouma in 2007 by Michael Nichols

We positioned ourselves along the line of elephants and shot three mosaics of pictures that we could stitch together and count them very accurately. It looked like there were over 300.

We hit a few more large herds of buffalo, giving us another 1,000 or so to add to the total. They were hard to photograph, kind of hidden below a canopy of forest. Their exact numbers would be hard to count in the photos.

It will be a few days before we know what the total elephant number is, but I think we are looking at just over 600 total.

We plan on doing some follow-up complete counts, counting only elephants. So stay tuned -- we will have a good number in the next 4 or 5 days.

Then I will give you my thoughts on these results. I am remaining a counter here, [showing] no emotion, but believe me there is a lot. I have been at this battle for almost 30 years and this is the last stand.

NGS photo of elephant carcass and vultures in 2007 by Michael Nichols

Earlier entries by Mike Fay:

Day 1: March 4, 2009 (Survey begins)

Day 2: March 5, 2009 (Granite mountains, Bon village, eastern center of the park)

Day 3: March 6, 2009 (Gara Plain, Kieke Village, Rigueik pan)

Day 4: March 7, 2009 (First live elephants and a large herd of buffalo)

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

Photo courtesy Mike Fay

A haven for hundreds of thousands of elephants only a few decades ago, Zakouma National Park in Chad in northern central Africa is now on the frontline of the continent's ivory wars. Poaching in recent years may have reduced the number of elephants in the reserve to fewer than a thousand.

Elephants could vanish from the park within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

Conservationist J. Michael Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, is in Zakouma this week to survey the park from the air. He and others are hoping to get an accurate picture of the status of the park's surviving elephants.

Fay (in the photo above, on the right) made headlines in 2006 -- the last year the park's elephants were counted officially -- when he found evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma's boundaries.

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 3: March 6, 2009

My cold feels like it is transitioning to something more closely related to bronchitis. As soon as I put my head down to sleep I start a whooping cough. Glad I am just flying the plane and not counting or writing down data.

We were off the ground on schedule, windows washed, observers in place.

NGS photo of Gara Plain after the rains by Michael Nichols

We flew over Kieke Village where there is a guard outpost on the southeast side of the park. There were sorghum fields right up to the border with the park. Almost immediately we spotted a herd of 18 giraffe. There was a time when giraffe tails fetched a high price here. They were given to brides as part of the dowry, but that practice has started to wane and the number of giraffe in Zakouma is definitely going up.

Counts of hartebeest, giraffe, water buck and warthogs started to mount.

Later we [will] compile all the photos from the various waypoints of all elephant and buffalo herds and hand count them on the computer screen. We usually find that the buffalo are about 20 percent underestimated and that elephants are just about correct.

We carried on for four more hours this morning. It is hotter than yesterday. We accumulated hundreds of hartebeest, roan, ostrich, giraffe, old elephant carcasses, waterbuck, and a second herd of buffalo of over 400. But no elephants.

We passed into the zone where in 2006 still we found many groups of elephants. There were none.

As we got further to the north on the east side of the park we ran into a herd of 400 camels. They were outside the park boundary but only by a few hundred meters. There were a large number of nomadic camps, cows, sheep and goats.

The number of elephant carcasses from years past continued to accumulate.

NGS photo of Rigueik Plain waterhole by Michael Nichols

Total for the day: 0 elephants, 203 old elephant carcasses. We do not find them all by any means. Some burn, some are hidden by the grass.

We can only hope we have a large package of elephants to the north of us.

 

Elephant carcasses found in Zakouma National Park in 2007.

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

Earlier entries by Mike Fay:

Day 1: March 4, 2009 (Survey begins)

Day 2: March 5, 2009 (Granite mountains, Bon village, eastern center of the park)

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

A recent elephant carcass that the team discovered from the air on calibration flights before the survey.

Photo by Mike Fay

J. Michael Fay, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic, is back in Chad, Africa, to survey the elephant population in Zakouma National Park. The park is on the frontline of Africa's ivory wars, where conservation groups and the Chadian government are fighting daily to save some of the last surviving central African elephants.

Zakouma elephants could vanish within the next two to three years if poaching continues at current levels, according to recent population surveys, National Geographic News reported three months ago.

While on assignment for National Geographic magazine in August 2006, Fay made headlines when he revealed evidence of entire herds of elephants slaughtered by poachers armed with automatic weapons just outside Zakouma. The Texas-size park was a sanctuary for as many as 300,000 elephants in the 1970s. The most recent aerial surveys suggest fewer than 1,000 elephants remain.

Now Fay is back in the air over Zakouma to assess the situation.

Zakouma Survey 2009

By J. Michael Fay

Day 1: March 4, 2009

I woke up to the roaring of lions around 3:30 a.m. I could hear five different prides announcing their presence; the lion density here in Zakouma is high. It was already hot and I was coming down with a cold, not good conditions for the 30-some hours of flying we were to do to complete this survey over the next five days.

I peeled myself out of bed at 4:30. Only a few doves were cooing. Our plan was to get in the air at dawn every day of the survey, fly for 4 hours in the morning, until it got too unbearably hot and the animals were firmly hidden in the shade. Then we would try to fit in at least 2 hours in the PM to keep the time as short as possible.

The risk is that elephants will traverse from a non-surveyed to a surveyed area in the night and you miss them, or vise versa.

The team consisted of me, Darren Potgieter, Nicolas Taloua and Bechir Djimet. I was going to pilot since I hadn't flown in a couple of years and wanted to have some fun. Darren, the guy who actually works here in Zakouma for WCS [Wildlife Conservation Society] piloting our plane, would be the front-seat observer, collecting waypoints and observations. Nicholas and Bechir work for the anti-poaching unit here and often fly with Darren. They were the back-seat observers.

Elephants drink at the last remaining water hole during dry season in Zakouma.

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

This survey is to give us the first definitive proof of that grim fact or perhaps worse. More importantly, it is going to show us how intense poaching was this dry season.

Using funds from private donors, WCS and NGS were able to provide full-time aerial support for antipoaching efforts, starting in May 2008.

Since that time Darren had only found 18 poached carcasses in the park. If poaching intensity was like it had been to reduce the population from 3,885 to under 1,000 we should find many more fresh carcasses than that. So this year's count sadly will be just as much about the dead elephants we find as live ones.

The vestiges of a dust storm that completely obscured visibility only a few days before was still in the air. My throat was dry, the sun shone a dull orange cast in slight haze.

Conservationist Mike Fay in Zakouma National Park

NGS photo by Michael Nichols

The north of the park is bordered by the Korum River. In 2006 there were a lot of cattle herders using wells here to stage incursions into the park. Darren said that those wells were filled in and it looked like that cattle problem was solved.

As we flew our transects data started to accumulate via shouts from the back seats: warthog 4 left, roan 2 right, oribi 2 left. As the array of parallel lines accumulated on our GPS display a story of the wildlife and human presence in this vast western part of the park emerged.

Little Evidence of New Poaching

To the north we picked up a decent number of duikers, oribis and warthogs, and a few roan antelope.

As we progressed to the south, we found more and more roan, and giraffe, ostrich and grand koudou [greater kudu] near the rock outcrops in the south.

It seemed that wildlife numbers had increased in this arid part of the park since 2006. There was little evidence of any new elephant poaching from the wet season.

All in all conditions had improved here because the cattle problem was solved, the village in the southwest had not expanded their sorghum culture beyond previous limits, wildlife is increasing, and there is little sign of increased elephant poaching in this part of the park.

We didn't expect to see elephants today, and we didn't.

For maps, photos and data from the 2006 survey please go to National Geographic magazine's Ivory Wars.

NGS Photo by Michael Nichols

Photo courtesy Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell

Elephants can communicate with one another miles apart by making subsonic calls that vibrate the ground, researchers established a few years ago.

But now a leading investigator in the field of elephant communications has discovered that elephants receiving the calls monitor the vibrating ground through both their feet and trunks. This may allow the elephants to position themselves with several points of contact on the ground to triangulate the direction of the elephant making the call.

"Research has shown that elephants issuing calls, including those of love -- more precisely, females in estrus -- produce not only audible sounds, but also low-frequency seismic vibrations that can travel through the near-surface soils for distances up to several kilometers," says a Stanford University news release about the research.

"Elephants can detect these seismic vibrations in two ways: by bone conduction, in which the vibrations travel from the toe tips into the foot bones, then up the leg and into the middle ear, and by somatosensory reception, involving vibration-sensitive cells in the bottom of the foot that send signals to the brain via nerves," the university said.

Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell discovered how elephants listen with their feet to underground vibrations by watching them in Namibia.
Photo by Max Salomon/Stanford

Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell, an ecologist and consulting assistant professor in otolaryngology at Stanford's School of Medicine, has been studying elephant communication for more than 15 years. During that time she's puzzled over which seismic sensing system elephants use most often in locating the source of a call. In her most recent field season last summer, she finally got an answer, Stanford said.

"They are placing themselves in a way that best suits bone conduction, rather than somatosensory reception," O'Connell-Rodwell said.

She came to her conclusion by studying of how male elephants respond to estrus calls from females, Stanford said. She played recorded calls through a speaker coupled with the ground and concealed in a pile of brush near a watering hole in Etosha National Park in Namibia. The speaker emitted both an acoustic and seismic signal.

NGS Photo by Michael Nichols

"The bulls would come in and then we would test them as they headed out of the water hole in different directions. They would always place themselves perpendicular to the direction the sound had traveled," she said.

"That orientation puts each of the elephant's ears at a different distance from the sound source. It also creates the maximum possible difference in the distance between each of the elephant's ears and the source. That enhances their ability to distinguish the point of origin."

Photo by Jodi Cobb/NGS

The first ivory auction in ten years sold over seven tons of tusks to Chinese and Japanese bidders in Namibia today, raising more than U.S. $1,200,000 for elephant conservation, the Associated Press reported.

The sales will continue over the next two weeks in Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. In total, nearly 110 tons of ivory -- harvested from more than 10,000 elephants -- are being offered in four sales sanctioned by the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Environmental groups are furious.

Photo by Michael Nichols/NGS

I know what she means. My generation has seen the best of times, I sometimes think. The planet seemed to be bigger, richer, more resilient forty years ago. And our technology today is, as the great biologist E. O. Wilson says, godlike.