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Inside a Remarkable Local Effort to Stop Elephant Poaching in Zambia

Poachers have killed more than 90 percent of Zambia's elephants since the 1950s. In response, villagers banded together to protect those in North Luangwa National Park last year.

John C. Cannon

Viewfinder: Elephants Race in Vietnam

Mahouts ride their elephants in a river swimming race during the Buon Don elephant festival in Vietnam's Central Highlands in the Dak Lak province on March 12th, 2019.

Pacific Standard Staff

An elephant crosses National Highway-37, which passes through the flooded Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern state of Assam on August 14th, 2017.

Environment

In India, New Tactics Are Being Implemented to Prevent Human-Elephant Clashes

These conflicts are particularly apparent in the Hassan district of Karnataka, the state housing India's largest population of Asian elephants.

Vasudevan Sridharan

Viewfinder: Elephants Arrive in Sri Lanka’s Capital for an Annual Festival

Commuters interact with an elephant as he rests on a public road ahead of the annual Navam Maha Perahera festival of the historic Buddhist Gangaramaya Temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 18th, 2019.

Pacific Standard Staff

Environment

Researchers Create First Evidence-Based Map of Asian Elephant Populations

A Sri Lankan research team used a series of interviews over a four-year period to create a country-wide distribution map of the endangered species.

Shreya Dasgupta

Environment

Measuring the Ecological Impact of Losing Forest Elephants

A new study looks at the damage that would occur to flora and fauna if forest elephant populations continue to decline.

Emily Clark

Flamingoes are seen at Lake Amboseli from a spotter plane overhead during a trial run for an aerial animal census at the Amboseli National Park on June 21st, 2018. Amboseli is among the most renowned case studies in the world for elephant population and behavioral factors with the last official count, carried out in the year 2011, yielding some 1,200 animals. Preparations are underway for an aerial census over the 392-square-kilometer park with trial runs kicking off in June.

News in Brief

Viewfinder: Counting Flamingos in Southern Kenya

Flamingoes are seen at Lake Amboseli from a spotter plane overhead during a trial run for an aerial animal census at the Amboseli National Park on June 21st, 2018.

Pacific Standard Staff

Elephants participate in a football game to kick off the World Cup fever as part of an anti-gambling campaign at the ancient Thai city of Ayutthaya on June 13th, 2018. Painted with flags of countries competing in the World Cup, the nine elephants played a game against students from a local school ahead of the start of the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia.

News in Brief

Viewfinder: Elephants Celebrate the World Cup in Thailand

Elephants participate in a football game to kick off the World Cup fever as part of an anti-gambling campaign at the ancient Thai city of Ayutthaya on June 13th, 2018.

Pacific Standard Staff

Elephants can communicate over long distances with low-frequency rumbles called infrasound.

Environment

Could Earthquake-Monitoring Technology Help Save Elephants?

A new study shows how technology developed to study earthquakes could help conservationists monitor elephant populations from afar.

Kate Wheeling

Environment

New DNA Extraction Techniques Are Helping Enhance Our Understanding of Elephants’ Biological History

Recent advances in laboratory methods are enabling scientists to recover very old or degraded DNA sequences from warmer places, where DNA degrades at a much faster rate.

Sue Palminteri