Elephant Management and Poaching in South Africa

[mposthumus]

[Lisbeth]

“Elephant poaching has been happening for a while now in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, so we did expect that it would at some stage reach our area,” said SANparks spokesperson William Mabasa.

He does not say what they have done to avoid it. They must even have know which were the vulnerable area.

[Flutterby]

Very pleased to see this ad in Times Square, New York, last week. The ad played for nearly a minute and I saw it repeated quite often.

[nan]

and something about Rhinos

[Mel]

Excellent!

[Flutterby]

Nothing about rhinos nan. The rhinos don't seem to hit the international stage like elephants do.

[Lisbeth]

Most people have never seen one and it does not awake the same sentiments as the elephant does. Most people do not even know what is happening

[nan]

but it's a good start...

[Richprins]

We should start a topic here, I reckon.

Prinsadam was on a night drive around Punda Maria recently, and they found a headless elephant carcass. The head had been removed by rangers. Now why would that happen, unless it was a detusked elephant?

It is a difficult one, as rangers always remove tusks anyway, normally, to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. But never heard of a head being removed?

It takes a long time to chop the tusks out...

Anyone with info?

[Scipio]

Only three reasons for removing the head.

1)It was a tusker known, and it died from natural causes and the head is kept for showing it later.
2)It was a poached elephant and the head was removed after it was found to be shot in that body part for forensics.
3)It was hunted and the head was removed as a trophy to hang on a hunters wall.