Skip to main content

Ivory Coast relocating elephants under new scheme

Conservationists are capturing and relocating elephants in Ivory Coast forced out of their traditional
habitat by encroaching humans, in the first such operation attempted in Africa’s forests.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare this week began tranquillising elephants outside the western town of Daloa, then locking them in a crate for the 10-hour drive to Assagny National Park on the southern coast.
According to IFAW, the elephants were forced out of their original homes in Marahoue National Park by human migration possibly related to the West African country’s 2010-11 post-election violence.
Ivory Coast has not conducted a recent census to determine how many forest elephants are left in the country, but conservationists estimate there are a few hundred. In Central Africa, their populations have been devastated by poaching in recent years. Forest elephants are smaller than the savannah elephants found in Africa’s eastern and southern regions. They have more oval-shaped ears and straighter tusks, and occupy dense forests stretching from Central African Republic to Liberia.
The dozen or so elephants targeted for relocation moved near Daloa two years ago and began wreaking havoc, destroying crops and killing two people including a small boy who accidentally stumbled upon elephant calves, prompting their mother to attack, IFAW said.
One calf is among those to be tranquillised and moved, the organisation said.
Elephants are widely cherished as Ivory Coast’s national animal, and the government contacted the animal welfare organisation for help to solve the problem without hunting the elephants down and contributing to the ongoing decline of forest elephant populations throughout the region, said Celine Sissler-Bienvenu, IFAW’s director for Francophone Africa. — AP

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...