Elephants News

Governments and businesses looking to crack down on the illegal ivory trade have a new tool in their hands, courtesy of WWF, TRAFFIC, and the CITES Secretariat. For the first…

JAKARTA — A new study on certified oil palm plantations and their links to past deforestation has sparked a debate over whether they can be considered sustainable if they’re established…

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Kaavan, a 35-year-old male elephant (Elephas maximus maximus), is finally set to end his captivity inside a poorly maintained zoo in Pakistan after a historic court…

My love and passion for the wild elephants of Sri Lanka run deep within my veins, as deep as my love for photography. Big males known as “tuskers” are a…

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — As the chief veterinary surgeon at the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), Tharaka Prasad is probably the only Sri Lankan to receive messages from an elephant…

MINNERIYA NATIONAL PARK, Sri Lanka -- Playful elephant calves in Sri Lanka’s Minneriya National Park are a common sight. But things were different for the two baby elephants noticed when…

On July 23rd, 2020, we Mozambicans celebrated the 60th birthday of our flagship national park: Gorongosa. It is located in the center of our country and is a symbol of…

In 1976, a young Asian elephant named Shanthi was flown from Sri Lanka to the U.S. An orphaned calf, she was a gift from the children of the former to…

Captured in the wild in 1973, in the country then known as Burma, Thaung Sein Win has been ridden by various mahouts over the years, dragging thousands of freshly felled…

Nearly 400 elephants have died in Botswana's Okavango Delta since March, in what wildlife experts say is one of the largest elephant mortality events ever recorded. Conservationists have criticized the…

In September 2019, the noon sky over a part of Jambi province in Indonesian Sumatra turned crimson. Fires had been raging through Indonesia for the past few months, and certain…

Scraping sounds fill the nights at Mapungubwe, a national park at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. Families…

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at a project that aims to preserve the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa and the biodiversity…

In a Facebook photo, a truck with an open trailer is backed up against a mound of sand. The tailgate is down, and the gray shape of an elephant steps…

IKPAKO, Nigeria — Dark stumps of half-charred trees, dry cassava stems and dead tree trunks cover a large   swath of land on the way to Ikpako, a small farming enclave…

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Herathhami Dissanayake, 71, a rice farmer from Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka, says he’s despondent about the increase in wild animals raiding the crops in his…

Poaching is threatening wildlife conservation in Africa. Elephant (Loxodonta africana) and rhino (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) populations have been devastated and the bush meat trade is severely impacting wildlife…

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Ami Vitale, a photographer for National Geographic who documented the death of the last male northern white rhino, Sudan. Listen…

The outlook for eastern Africa's mountain gorillas is growing brighter, as a recent census released on Dec. 16 shows that the subspecies’ numbers have risen since 2011. Scientists believe there…

On Nov. 23, the last Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in Malaysia died. Named Iman, she’d lived in captivity in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo for just over five…

The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) is an audacious project that envisions a vast space where migrating species can cross international borders following their ancient seasonal paths. But there’s a…

Recent dry-season fires that raged across Indonesia in September and October have taken a toll on forests, even in protected areas. Fires were particularly destructive in southern Sumatra, burning around…

COLOMBO — When Chandi, an aggressive male elephant prone to breaking into village homes and destroying crops, was finally captured, he was collared and transferred to a holding ground in…

Bonobos, unlike closely related chimpanzees, choose love over war. But with each passing year, there is less room in this world for these amorous primates as the world’s largest bonobo…

DURBAN, South Africa — There is a scene at the start of the film Last of the Big Tuskers where a man is having his upper arm tattooed. As the…

ANURADHAPURA/COLOMBO — Wildlife authorities in Sri Lanka have launched an investigation after seven elephants were found dead late last month in the north-central district of Anuradhapura. Four of the elephants…

A new report finds that both legal and illegal trade are detrimental to the conservation of Africa’s iconic wildlife. Released last week by the London-based NGO World Animal Protection to…

Elephant poachers are using logging roads to infiltrate some of the last remaining pristine forests in Central Africa, according to a study published in July. The study’s authors also revealed…

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with our adventurous Middle East-based staff writer John Cannon, who recently traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway to assess…

TENGGULUN, Indonesia — Around 20 Acehnese men sit cross-legged while smoking clove cigarettes on the terrace of a simple wooden building in this village on the island of Sumatra. The…