Some Thought on Elephant Culling

Whether you approve or not Elephant culling is taking place all the time. Many African elephants arrived in zoos as a direct result of being 'saved' from a cull. It is important to have some knowledge of the subject which is not drenched in emotion. The following article is informative and thought provoking as are some of the comments. It is well worth taking the time to read it. - Peter

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Elephant culling in Africa

So, here's a highly controversial subject. What do we all know about culling? Well, the general consensus seems to be that a bunch of animals are killed as humanely as possible in order to alleviate overpopulation issues. Most people seem to understand the necessities of these programs and accept it.....unless it involves an elephant!




Take Kruger National Park in South Africa for example. They used to practice animal reduction exercises (culling) up until 1995. This was when animal activists took the case up to the high courts and put a stop to it. Funny really, as culling is still done to this day on the buffalo in the Kruger. Not one placard has been hoisted to help the plight of the buffalo. This is part of the problem right there. We choose the animals we want to save instead of concentrating on saving all species.



Do I support culling of elephants in Africa? Yes! Do I like the practice? No! That's conservation. Seeing what is best for all species, and practising those policies down the line. Why is culling necessary? Well, its a long and involved story and I want to explain all aspects

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Learn About Elephant Language

'60 Minutes' to feature Cornell's Elephant Listening Project

In February, researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Elephant Listening Project (ELP) caught a charter plane from Cameroon to the Central African Republic with "60 Minutes" anchor Bob Simon and a video crew.

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There, in the Dzanga-Sangha Deep Forest Reserve, the crew filmed elephants and interviewed researchers -- including Peter Wrege, director of the ELP.



The program has scheduled a feature on the elephant project for Sunday, Jan. 3. The segment will cover that trip and a subsequent visit by Simon and his crew to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology this past June where he interviewed the founder of the project, Katy Payne, and ELP researchers Mya Thompson, Ph.D. '09, Elizabeth Rowland and Melissa Groo.



"At Dzanga, the focus was on the elephants and their communication," said Wrege. "We did lots of talking about what we know about a dictionary of elephant vocalizations and what we hope to learn."



Simon also interviewed Andrea Turkalo, a Wildlife Conservation Society researcher, a world expert on African elephants and a founding member of ELP. Turkalo, who continues to work with ELP researchers to understand the habits and biology of forest elephants, discussed details on individual elephants, her life in the reserve and efforts to keep poachers away.



At the lab, Simon reinterviewed Wrege; he also talked with Payne about how ELP got started and her perspective on the future of elephant conservation and with Thompson on how the lab uses field recordings to study forest elephant ecology and behavior.

To capture audio recordings of elephants, the researchers hoist battery-run bioacoustic recorders, which can record continuously for three months, up into trees and hope that monkeys do not pull out the wires, explained ELP analyst Rowland. In Ithaca, the sound files are analyzed using special Cornell-developed software that turns the sounds into visual representations featuring amplitude, frequency and time scales. Analysts then parse out individual elephant calls of males and females in various reproductive
 
 
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