The elephants of Ruaha
Article Abstract:
The elephants of the Ruaha game reserve in Tanzania are greatly influenced by the change of seasons. The wet season is from December to May, and during this time the land is lush and the elephants become fat. Toward the end of the wet season, female elephants enter into estrus which lasts only a few days. During this period the bulls exhibit an aggressive rutting behavior called musth. During the dry season, the elephants range widely for sparse food and many of the young and weak of the herd die. A calf's first dry season is the period it is most likely to die of starvation, exhaustion or heat stress.
Publication Name: Wildlife Conservation
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 1048-4949
Year: 1993
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The elephant as a natural resource: a perspective from Zimbabwe
Article Abstract:
Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) promotes conservation of wildlife while allowing rural people to profit economically. Landowners are able to own the wildlife on their land and to harvest it for any purpose in a sustainable manner. This policy has encouraged the rural poor to value wildlife and to replace livestock with wild animals. Poverty, not poaching, threatens wildlife, and the ivory trade ban is as colonialist as policies which reserved wildlife for the use of foreign elites. Allowing elephant culls has benefited some 20,000 rural households.
Publication Name: Wildlife Conservation
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 1048-4949
Year: 1993
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A lost generation
Article Abstract:
During the 1980s poaching decimated about half the elephant population of the Ruaha reserve in Tanzania. This also caused the decimation of a generation of elephants. In 1989 when the poaching effectively stopped, there were few males older than 16 years and females over 34. Furthermore, there was a whole generation of younger elephants missing. This may have occurred because the poaching stressed cows to the point they stopped reproducing or increased mortality of young calves. A study in 1992 shows that young calves are now surviving the dry seasons and birth rates have increased.
Publication Name: Wildlife Conservation
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 1048-4949
Year: 1993
User Contributions:
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