Is there room on this planet for humans and elephants to coexist peacefully?

Elephants

My dictionary says that elephants are proboscidean animals - large animals with a long trunk. The African Elephant is largest land mammal (up to four metres high and over six tonnes) and has large flapping ears. The male can weigh twice as much as the female. African elephants come in forest and savannah subspecies. The smaller (three metres high and five tonnes) Indian elephant has smaller ears and a more humped back.

Female elephants live in herds with their young, but males do not stay once they reach puberty. The oldest female leads the herd; she can be up to 70 years old. The elephant gestation period is 22 months.

African Elephant Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Asian Elephant Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Male and female African elephants tend to have tusks but only some male Asian elephants do. Tusks are actually incisor teeth, growing up to three metres long. The tusks are valuable to humans as ivory, so they often get poached, which has a devastating effect on their numbers in Africa; from about 1.3 million in 1970 to just 600,000 by 1989. They were put on the endangered list in 1990, which means that there is a ban on trading them or their ivory, but some countries with healthy populations oppose the ban. Elephants compete for habitat with humans and there is conflict when they come into contact or the elephants raid and trample crops. Elephants are also killed for meat.

Asian elephants have also seen their habitat and rage shrink. They are also poached, even though there has been a ban in trade of Asian elephant products since 1975. There are 30,000-40,000 wild Asian elephants, plus 16,000 domesticated elephants. Domesticated elephants are used in the logging industry, or for patrolling and anti-poaching work. Although exploited, they are considered sacred, the Hindu God of prophecy, Ganesa or Ganesh, has an elephant's head.

There are African and Asian elephants in zoos and safari parks and circuses around the world.

Until recently it was not recognised that there is a third kind of elephant, the pygmy elephant on the island of Borneo. Previously it was assumed to be the same as other Asian elephants, until DNA tests proved otherwise. The WWF has just begun to study them. At 8 feet tall they are a foot shorter than Asians. They have longer tails and are more docile. There are believed to be around 1,000 to 1,5000 of them.

Elephants can fulfill a useful role in opening up firebreaks, and they also are necessary to plants whose seed they pass, ready-packaged in dung.Recent news stories involving elephants include:

• Two Elephants Collide During Circus Act July 08 2005
• E-Tagging of Pygmy Elephants Helps Study June 30 2005
• Wildlife Smuggling a U.S. Border Problem June 24 2005
• S.Africa opposes Japan's plan to expand whale hunt June 14 2005
• Elephants return to South Africa's famed Karoo June 08 2005
• Elephants Flee War Zone May 28 2005
• Wireless Tracking Devices: Can Poachers Use It, Too? May 26 2005
• Ivory Coast's elephants seek peace abroad May 25 2005
• Cellphone technology to track dolphins May 18 2005
• Lincoln Park Zoo Probed After Deaths May 14 2005
• Last of 3 African Elephants Dies in Utah May 02 2005
• Zoo May Use Animal Waste As Energy Source April 29 2005
• Exotic Bites: Do You Dare? April 27 2005
• Elephants Rampage Through South Korea April 20 2005
• Scientists 'Rediscover' Rare Angolan Birds April 20 2005
• Uganda's Elephant Population Swells April 18 2005
• Police Seize Illegal Ivory in Ethiopia April 14 2005
• Elephant Kills Two, Injures Two in India April 11 2005
• Seattle Zoo Tries to Inseminate Elephant March 02 2005

Please see the following message for the remaining stories.

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Is there room on this planet for humans and elephants to coexist peacefully?

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