This safari is spending six fantastic days in the Serengeti, traversing it from bottom to top, and guess what’s dominating game viewing. Lions, leopard and cheetah of course, and with no surprise as the Serengeti is probably the best place in the world for big cats. See Chris Kordash’s photo above. But what was a…Continue reading
It’s likely there is a greater percentage of Chinese who wish to end the ivory trade and save elephants than there are Texans who believe in evolution. Think about that, please. Yesterday, the Chinese actress Li Bingbing – who has 20 million followers and counting on her social media – made a highly public visit…Continue reading
Chobe’s elephants are legendary, but what I saw this time is disconcerting. They are tame, inbred, their many broken tusks are like toothpicks, their family behaviors have broken down and they are destroying the Chobe forests. Is it time to cull? There is a growing consensus in the affirmative. Even the conservation organization Elephants Without…Continue reading
NPR’s reporting yesterday on elephant poaching in East Africa disappointed those of us who know East Africa and cherish its wildlife. In addition to simple inaccuracies, my main criticism was that the two stories filed by John Burnett were grossly narrow, cherry picking scandalous components while ignoring an essential bigger picture for cheap and trivial…Continue reading
The Times article about escalating elephant poaching rebroadcast by NPR this morning needs more discussion, especially if you’re a sympathetic American. Jeffrey Gettleman described in exquisite detail typical of his outstanding reporting the rapid increase in elephant poaching in remote places like The Congo. It was an excellent piece of journalism, mainly because Gettleman pulled…Continue reading
There are too many elephant in Africa and it’s going to cause serious trouble, soon. Our first big game park was Tarangire, and as Kathy Kowalski from Sabula, Iowa, remarked, “It’s like driving by cattle in Iowa.” When I think back the many years I’ve been doing this, and read the statistics of the early…Continue reading
Protecting wildlife in Africa is a contentious issue, but Wednesday the Kenyan government publicly and forcibly illustrated its commitment to do so. There was no equivocation left in the pile of burned elephant tusks in Tsavo National Park. It wasn’t just that 5 tonnes of confiscated ivory, worth close to $1 million on the black…Continue reading
Elephants are on the rise, in numbers, in tusk size, in populations, and their growing battle with humans is straight on the top of the mind of Tanzanian voters going to the polls this week. Lots has been mentioned about the side issue of the proposed Serengeti highway in this weekend’s elections, but an underlying…Continue reading
Elephant are safe for the moment, but what about the people they’re trampling? The CITES convention in Doha yesterday strongly rejected Tanzania and Zambia’s petition for a one-off sale of warehoused ivory. I think that’s the right decision, but will others step up to protect ordinary citizens? (And note that the Obama administration became a…Continue reading
Yesterday an American woman and her infant were killed by an elephant as they walked out of the Castle Forest Lodge near Mt. Kenya. The name of the woman has not yet been released, but Kenyan authorities said she was the 39-year old wife of a teacher at Nairobi’s International School. The age of the…Continue reading
There is no question that it is becoming more dangerous for tourists interacting with elephants. But is the $850,000 award to an injured tourist in Kenya the right response? Last November a Kenyan court awarded Wendy Martin, the wife of a British diplomat at the time serving in Kenya, 65 million Kenyan shillings in compensation…Continue reading
Elephant encounters are one of the most exciting and memorable of all safari events. But they’re getting harder to manage, and maybe, dangerous. I’m certain that elephant poaching has begun, again. Last week in the Serengeti my heart dropped when unexpectedly I watched two families of around 20 elephant run for high heaven away from…Continue reading
Tarangire’s elephant game viewing is excellent year-round. It simply can no longer be considered a seasonal destination. It was drier than when I visited the park only 12 days ago. Then there were many pools of standing water and a lush green veneer covered everything. For our visit this time it was still green, but…Continue reading
As beautiful as the unwild can be. Breakfast on the Ewaso Nyiro. About 10:30a. We left camp four hours ago and almost immediately saw two very young hyaena suckling. I was anxious to find one of my all-time favorite birds, the golden-breasted starling, but dozens of regular and Grevy’s zebra, many giraffe, elephant, lots of…Continue reading
We weren’t going to tip over, at least I didn’t think so. But when our “guide” clonked out and bounced onto the rubber floor our raft of four plus him started twirling in the fizzy white water like an alka seltzer dissolving in a glass. This was my first time on Nepal’s Rapti river and…Continue reading