Captive elephants die much younger than their wild counterparts, a new study reports. Researchers comparing pachyderms in European zoos and in the wild found that those in captivity had lifespans decades shorter and a greater number of stillbirths. Obesity, limited roaming space, and lack of companionship are thought to contribute to the early deaths. Says study leader Georgia Mason: “Currently zoos are consumers rather than producers of elephants…. We feel that’s not really appropriate” [The New York Times].
As reported in Science [subscription required], the researchers analyzed data on 4,500 African and Asian elephants, mostly female (zoos usually keep female elephants), kept in European zoos; they also looked at wild populations in Kenya and Myanmar. They found that African elephants in zoos had a median lifespan of 16.9 years compared to 56 years for elephants living in national park in Kenya. For Asian elephants, which are more endangered, the median lifespan for those in zoos was 18.9, compared to 41.7 years for those working on a timber enterprise in Myanmar but allowed to roam free. These numbers excluded premature and still-births, but researchers say still-births are also more common in zoo elephants.
Posts Tagged ‘elephants’
Zoo Elephants’ Lives Cut Short by Obesity, Loneliness
Elephant-Lovers Worry About Controversial Ivory Auctions in Africa
Yesterday, 7.2 metric tons of elephant tusks were auctioned off to ivory buyers from China and Japan, bringing in a total of $1.1 million for the seller, the Namibian government. The controversial sale was the first of four auctions that will be carried out over the next few weeks in a program approved by CITES, the international watchdog group that monitors trade in endangered species. The sales are intended to let southern African countries dispose of their ivory stockpiles, and CITES hopes that releasing legal ivory onto the market will decrease the demand for poached ivory.
However, some conservation groups worry that the sale will have the opposite effect, and may allow black market ivory dealers to label their goods as products from the legal auction. Says a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Michael Wamithi: “By permitting legal trade in ivory, we are only encouraging the laundering of stocks by poachers, thereby increasing illegal hunting activities…. The situation is very clear: More ivory in the market place equals many more dead elephants’’ [The New York Times blog].
Memories of Hard Times Might Help Elephants Survive Global Warming
Climatologists predict that the African continent will grow drier and drier as global warming brings more droughts. But whether elephants herds can survive might depend on their oldest members.
In a study published in Biology Letters, Charles Foley of the Wildlife Conservation Society studied how three family groups of elephants responded to a severe African drought in 1993. In a nine-month period 16 out of 81 elephant calves in three study groups died, a mortality rate of 20 per cent. The normal mortality rate of calves during non-drought years is only two per cent [Telegraph].
Two groups left the area during the drought, migrating to places with more water, and lost only five calves between them, compared to 11 for the group that stayed. Foley found that the groups that left contained older females than the remaining group, which was perhaps the key to their success: [T]he older females may have been able to draw on memories of an earlier severe drought from 1958 to 1961, and how the elephants survived it [The Press Association]. The third group, meanwhile, lost many of its females during plagues of poaching in the 1970s and 1980s. As such, its leader was only 33, too young to remember the the late 1950s drought.
Would Importing Ivory to China Fuel the Black Market?
China has asked the United Nation’s permission to import elephant ivory, and the U.N.’s Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is likely to approve the request at its meeting this week. But alarmed conservationists worry that allowing legally imported elephant tusks to circulate in China’s markets would provide cover for illegal ivory bought from poachers in Africa. They say if China becomes an approved ivory trading partner, African elephants “will be shot into extinction” [Telegraph].
The U.N. banned all international trade in elephant ivory in 1989, but later relented and allowed four African countries to occasionally sell ivory from elephants that died natural deaths or that were shot as rogues. CITES allowed a sale in 1999, but opened it only to “approved buyers” who could prove that they policed the black market in ivory. Now, however, a second auction of 108 tonnes from the same four countries is being planned, and the Chinese, who were excluded from the first sale, are seeking “approved buyer” status, claiming they are much more active now in combating illegal trading activities [The Independent].
