Robert Hickson • May 09, 2019 •
Elephants can be an important futures symbol. The “elephant in the room” – also, unnecessarily pigmented, called a “black elephant” by some futurists – is the well known large and obvious issue that people refuse to address. Then there is the parable of the “blind men and the elephant”, which … Read More
Brendan Moyle • May 07, 2015 •
Isn’t the internet wonderful? You can find all sorts of information from the comfort of a keyboard. I have been assured many extraordinary things are true, because someone found them on the internet. Homeopathy works, vaccines don’t, Noah’s Ark has been found again for real. But it isn’t just those fond of wild-conspiracies that can conjure facts up. Here’s one … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Mar 03, 2015 •
It is a persistent problem with the illegal ivory market, is we don’t have actual records of how much is being sold. It is difficult to determine what the size of the market for carvings, what proportion are new carvings from recently poached ivory, what percentage are fake ivory, and what percentage is older carvings being resold. One thing our … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Feb 12, 2015 •
Reducing the illegal demand in ivory is an important strategy to bring elephant poaching in Africa down to sustainable levels. With that in mind, the CITES Secretariat and the CITES Management Authority of China organised a workshop in Hangzhou. This was held over the the 28 and 29th of January. As I’ve previously posted, I was there presenting some … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Sep 07, 2014 •
While I think the evidence points to the volumes of poached ivory being sent to Asia is being stockpiled, others are convinced otherwise. There is a theory that this poached ivory is being made into carvings to be sold to unscrupulous consumers. One potential pathway for this is the legal factories. The legal factories (36 of these) could be using … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Sep 05, 2014 •
The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem refers to a group of connected nature reserves in Kenya and Tanzania. It includes the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya and the Serengeti in Tanzania. It represents an important area for elephant conservation as it very large refuge (32,000 square km) for many of East Africa’s elephants. The latest report on population density has been published. Read More
Brendan Moyle • Jul 16, 2014 •
It has becoming remarkably common to see the claim that elephants will become extinct because of poaching in the next 10-12 years. Our august NZ Herald reports this with: Crush NZ’s seized ivory, petition asks: Campaigners say illegal trade could see African elephant extinct in a decade. I’ve seen the message on social media like twitter also. So, lets … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Apr 22, 2014 •
One of the unsettled issues with the surge in elephant poaching seen after 2008/9 is explaining why it took off. The scale represents a break from the past. It seems inexplicable in terms of what we understood the drivers of poaching were. These were basically either affluence in consumer markets (like Asia) or poor governance in African countries. Neither … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Mar 04, 2014 •
Elephant poaching exploded in the late 2000s. This has led to a range of measures to stop this traffic. Some are quite sensible- increased international cooperation and coordination on enforcement has had successes. Both Operation Cobra (2013) and Operation Cobra II (2014) shattered some conspiracies in Africa and Asia. Some measure, well, seem to be applied in haste and … Read More