Order of the High Court of Kerala in the matter of Sangita Iyer Vs Guruvayur Devasom & Others dated 17/02/2025. The Kerala High Court directed the Deputy Administrator (Livestock) of Guruvayoor Devaswom to file a detailed affidavit explaining the procedures being followed in Guruvayur Devaswom for booking and transporting elephants …
Conservationist groups in Zimbabwe are in a tizzy over the plans recently announced by the government for "getting rid of surplus elephants". Peter Mundy, chief ecologist of Zimbabwe's wildlife department, has declared that the government would either sell or kill at least 5,000 pachyderms this year. The country's largest natural …
Sri Lanka's fierce civil war has taken a heavy toll on it's wildlife. A recent report in the Sri Lankan Daily News claims that land mines have killed or injured several wild elephants. Charles Santipillai, a Sri Lankan zoologist, estimates that about 20 elephants are killed every year by mines …
Last year, when a herd of elephants from the Purulia forests of Bihar made its annual trek to greener areas in the Bankura and Medinipur districts of West Bengal, it strayed close to Calcutta, causing much fear (Down To Earth, Vol No February 15, 1994). This year, the tuskers have …
CONSERVATION authorities from 126 nations are sorting out differences over which endangered flora and fauna need protection, and the modus operandi at the ninth meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (cites), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The conference, attended by officials, representatives of conservation organisations and traders, …
UNLIKE many other wildlife films in which animals are painted in an impenetrable and maudlin rosy hue, Mike Pandey in his The Last Migration has been able to get good, dispassionate footage on the desperate human-animal conflict that dwindling forest areas are forcing into the open. The film tracks the …
1994 seems to be prime time for pachyws- First there were 2 books describI dwir lives and future - Douglas edwick's Fate of the Elephant and ow Sukumar's Elephant Nights and VK and then came 2 films - the Wo Oscar nominee Elephant Capture &wVoia;, directed by Mike Pandey, Lnshnendu …
MYANMAR'S minister of forestry Chit Swe has launched, with much fanfare, an ambitious project to artificially inseminate a 6,000-strong herd of elephants, which lift heavy logs in the teak forests of Myanmar. Swe has enlisted the help of Michael J Schmidt, chief research veterinarian of the Washington Park Zoo, in …
RAMAN Sukumar's book on elephants begins with a bull with a headache. We meet Biligiri in the first paragraph: he is an adolescent wild male elephant, "confused, like other sixteen year olds" (sic), with "a dull ache in his temples". He thrashes about in water, and does some pretty strange …
SEVEN-and-a-half ha of fertile swampland, ideally suited for paddy cultivation, and endowed with several species of commercially valuable trees like rosewood and teak, would seem like a bequest to trumpet about. But for 60-year-old Raghavan Chettiar, the inheritance of just such a plot in Tamil Nadu"s Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary has …
The presence of Gujjars in the Rajaji National Park could be responsible for the significant increase in elephant numbers in the past four years, wildlife observers claim. According to them, the Gujjars have minimised poaching and regulated the monitoring of the elephant population in the park. The number of elephants …
Anthrax has claimed three elephants in Jaldapara wildlife sanctuary in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, sparking fears that the infectious disease could wipe out animal life in the reserve. The disease, which threatens domestic herbivores and even humans, may have been contracted from infected cattle in nearby villages. The sanctuary …
DURING the last few days of 1993, about 60 pachyderms were chased and tormented over 400 km in southwestern West Bengal. The episode dramatically highlighted the increasing tension between human being and beast in various parts of the state. The elephant herd migrates from Dalma Reserve Forest in Bihar to …
A ONCE-peaceful herd of about 150 elephants in southern Sri Lanka has turned violent, destroying property and killing humans in a last ditch attempt to save its habitat, writes Mallika Wanigasundara in a Panos report. The pachyderms feel threatened by the Pelwatte Sugar Co -- an ill-conceived project that encroached …
Depredating raids by wild elephants into human settlements have often been reported from Assam. But on August 13, the elephants became victims of a totally unprecedented retaliatory strike: Angry villagers poisoned three adult elephants in the vicinity of the Boronodi wildlife sanctuary in the Bodo-dominated Darrang district. Five other elephants …
FREE trade in ivory may not be environment-friendly, but neither is a ban, according to a research paper published by economist Timothy Swanson in Economic Policy. He argues that though bans may effectively protect oceanic species, they do not work in the case of elephants. Swanson explains this is because …
Ranging behaviour of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) was studied using radio telemetry in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve had home ranges of over 500 sq km. These sizes are much larger than those defined by earlier studies. The study ranged across the three southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and …
The West Bengal government has begun work on developing an elephant sanctuary in the contiguous forest areas of Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. The state government's decision has been prompted by regular clashes between the local population and elephants, both of which are growing in number and need more space. Inhabitants …
Information on the African rainforest elephant, whose survival is threatened, is trickling in now via satellite, thanks to a new technology. Wildlife biologists of the New York Zoological Society have put collars that emit ultra-high-frequency signals on a forest elephant in Korup National Park, Cameroon, and on a savannah elephant …
UNTIL recently, indiscriminate hunting and poaching had threatened the survival of elephants in Africa. But the international ban on ivory trade and increased vigilance against poachers have reduced elephant-killing to an extent that their population is increasing annually by 5 per cent in many African countries. As a result, elephants …
WILDLIFE officials in Namibia are battling to save the world's last herd of desert elephants. The herd of 50 is threatened with the anthrax virus. As the disease can kill within 24 hours, officials are trying to vaccinate the elephants with darts fired from a helicopter. Desert elephants are no …
