Chimp & See Talk

Elephants?

  • puddock by puddock

    I was hoping one of our scientists (or anyone else!) could answer this - what species of elephant are we seeing in these videos? I saw a short article in the New Scientist today about endangered forest elephants and wondered if that's what we were seeing, as they are in the forest rather than on the plains? Thanks!

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    They are forest elephants indeed! There was a nice discussion about elephants here: https://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/boards/BCP000000c/discussions/DCP0000f99

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  • puddock by puddock

    Thanks Mimi. There was a brief (and depressing) piece in New Scientist today, saying that forest elephants face extinction within the next 10 years. 😦 A study by the Wildlife Conservation Society found that their numbers had fallen by 65 % between 2002 and 2013 across the Central African Republic. If I remember rightly, this is one of the areas we are looking at?

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    Hi @puddock, unfortunately CAR is super dangerous to work in so we never were able to get a site going there. There is INCREDIBLE work being done by WCS and the people at Chinko National Park though (http://www.chinkoproject.com/) who are really risking everything to continue working with the wildlife there.

    Elephants of all types are in massive decline and it seems really possible that we might lose them all in our lifetime. There are amazing organizations try to combat this decline though, so not all hope is lost yet 😕

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