Ending The Elephant Slaughter

Intercepting poachers at Lewa Conservancy.

I have never understood the attraction of hunting, either for profit or for adventure. I do of course understand the need for hunting if your personal survival depends on it. I also understand that many native populations around the world still rely on hunting wild game to supplement their diets, even if they have access to modern food sources. However, it is rare, if not completely unheard of for native populations who hunt wild game to indiscriminately slaughter large numbers of wild animals simply for ‘sport’ or ‘adventure’.

I was shocked to read recently that the Convention on The Trade in Endangered Species estimates that at least 20,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2015. In fact, there are now fears that more elephants are being slaughtered each year than are being born. Needless to say, it is impossible to know exactly how many elephants are dying each year at the hands of criminal poaching gangs.

In 2016, the Great Elephant Census indicated that poachers slaughtered nearly 30% of East Africa’s savanna elephants from 2007 to 2014, some 144,000 animals. Poachers also killed nearly two-thirds of central Africa’s forest elephants between 2002 and 2013. Currently, fewer than 400,000 elephants are believed to remain in 18 sub-Saharan countries. While this figure may seem large, when elephants are being slaughtered at the rate 20,000+ creatures a year, it doesn’t take a brilliant mathematician to work out that at the current rate of slaughter, Africa’s wild elephant population could be extinct in twenty years.

Thankfully, there are organisations and people prepared to do whatever they can to minimize—even if they cannot completely end—this wild life slaughter. One of these people is the philanthropist (and former co-founder of Microsoft), Paul Allen, who has funded a new high tech anti-poaching system known as the Domain Awareness System (DAS). Responding to the elephant poaching crisis in the Great Elephant Census report, Allen and his team of technologists and conservation experts are partnering with park managers across Africa to provide the new technology to help protect this iconic species and other wildlife threatened by human activities. 

(Stock image). Credit: © jhvephoto / Fotolia

The Domain Awareness System aggregates the positions of radios, vehicles, aircraft and animal sensors to provide users with a real-time dashboard that depicts the wildlife being protected, the people and resources protecting them, and the potential illegal activity threatening them.

Other high tech tools that are helping in this vital fight are satellites, drones, camera traps, animal sensors, weather monitors and eventually new technology yet to be invented. The new technology also helps take the guess work out of the anti-poaching fight. With real-time data at their fingertips, park rangers can respond quickly and effectively to catch poachers before they wreak havoc on elephant herds and other wild game. 

Sadly, however, it is not just the wild game that are threatened by poachers. Each year, heavily armed poaching gangs kill dozens of park rangers across Africa’s numerous game reserves. The Game Ranger website reports that, “More than 1,000 rangers have been killed worldwide and many more injured over the last 10 years.” Clearly, the stakes are high for both the wild life and their human protectors, so anything that can help reduce the human and animal death toll is to be applauded—which brings us back to the Domain Awareness System. 

The system has been installed at six protected wildlife conservation sites since November 2016. Working with Save the Elephants, African Parks Network, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Singita Grumeti Fund as well as the Lewa Conservancy and Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust, a total of 15 locations are expected to adopt the system this year.

When the system is fully operational by the end of 2017, it will cover more than 90,000 square miles of protected area. An ongoing consortium of conservation NGOs, government partners, and technology companies, is working with Paul Allen's team to integrate DAS with software used in nearly 500 sites across 46 countries to measure, evaluate and improve the effectiveness of wildlife law enforcement patrols and onsite conservation activities.

One can only hope that the combined forces—human and technological—arrayed against the illegal trade in elephant tusks, can put an effective end to this criminal practice before it is too late.

Here is a short video outlining how the Domain Awareness System works in practice:

More Information

Great Elephant Census...

Convention on The Trade in Endangered Species... 

Study: Legalizing ivory trade won’t save elephants…

Game Rangers Association of Africa…

New York City Round-Up #2

Remembering Jimmy Breslin

I came very late to the writing of Jimmy Breslin when I eventually 'discovered' him last year and bought an eBook copy of The World According to Jimmy Breslin, a 1988 compilation of some of his best essays. Since then I have added another seven Breslin books to my collection, and I am slowly working my way through all of them. I’ll let Wikipedia introduce the man:

James Earle "Jimmy" Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various New York City newspapers. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City, and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

Breslin, who passed away last week, was one of the old school newspaper greats, certainly in the same league as Joseph Mitchell, Alistair Cooke, and Meyer Berger, although the focus of his topics was often quite different.

Read A Part Of A Cop’s Past Lies Dead, the column Jimmy Breslin wrote following the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

If you can't find print copies of Breslin's books, many of his most popular works are now available as eBooks for Kindle, iPad, and other electronic devices. If you have never read the man, I urge you to seek out his work online, in secondhand bookshops, or electronically, and spend a few weeks as I am catching up with his remarkable writing.

Wikipedia entry for Jimmy Breslin…

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OpDocs: Who Makes The Bronx?

In the shade of the 4 train’s elevated track, Jerome Avenue’s dense clusters of auto-repair shops, storefronts, and manufacturers have long formed the economic spine of the Bronx, one of New York’s increasingly rare blue-collar neighborhoods. But as the city government considers rezoning the corridor to add residential development, change looms for the neighborhood’s social and economic landscape. 

Against that backdrop of uncertainty, Giacomo Francia, writing for the New York Times presents six short documentaries profiling an orange seller, ice cream vendor, glass cutter, hairdresser, mechanic, and pigeon keeper.

Giacomo Francia writes:

To make these profiles of the people who live and work around rapidly changing Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, I decided to spend last summer [2015] there. That summer turned into 10 months. I spent so much time with the workers on Jerome Avenue that when I greeted them in the morning, smiling, they would nod back at me and say “cuidate” (“be safe”)! I found that the rhythm of Jerome Avenue is driven by the mechanics and street vendors who line its streets, and the shops run by hard-working families, who are often sustaining small businesses proudly handed down to them from generations past.

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Destination Midtown App

Planning a visit to New York City? If so you might want to check out the newish Destination Midtown app. Some of New York City’s top attractions are highlighted in this interactive tour guide to Midtown Manhattan. 

The app features ten step-by-step walking tours that include 34th and 42nd Streets, parts of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, as well as suggestions for rainy days, nights out, the fashion conscious, and others.

Destination Midtown claims to be “your perfect companion to all the best landmarks, museums, restaurants, and shops.” Along with the ten walking tours users will find:

• Detailed attraction profiles featuring locals-only info, insider tips, photos, hours of operation, and more
• Perfectly-framed selfie spots to help you snag that next profile pic
• Always-up-to-date event calendar with Midtown’s top happenings
• The ability to save your favorite walks, attractions, and destinations in “My Trip” to help plan your day
• “Back of the guidebook” info about eating, drinking, and getting around in the Big Apple

The app, which is available as a free download for both Apple and Android devices, has been developed by the Destination Midtown Alliance, founded last year by Empire State Realty Trust. The Alliance is a coalition of businesses and attractions who joined together to spread the word about Midtown Manhattan as a primary tourist destination. The Alliance provides visitors with a variety of interactive itineraries of Midtown’s best sightseeing, dining, shopping and entertainment, all within a 15-minute walk of the heart of New York City, and the Empire State Building.

Here’s a six minute video from Expedia highlighting some of the main New York City attractions including those around the Midtown area:

New York City Vacation Travel Guide | Expedia from Expedia on Vimeo.

More Destination Midtown information and links to the free apps…

New York Times OpDocs: Pickle

I spend far too many hours online roving far and wide across the interweb. One of my go to sites is the New York Times, where a very reasonable monthly subscription gives me full access to the latest news via daily bulletins, and years of archived articles and content.

I recently began exploring the OpDocs section of the NYT Online, and have enjoyed watching many great video's ranging in length from five to fifteen minutes. The video embedded below, Pickle, is a delightful look at the parents of Amy Nicholson, who made the film, but more importantly, she documents the many animals, rescued and otherwise, that Amy's parents have cared for over many years. With regard to the video, Amy writes:

For more than two decades, I have been visiting my dad’s farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, often returning to New York with anecdotes about one member or another of the unlikely menagerie that lived there. I would regale my friends with tales of cross-eyed cats perpetually on the verge of death, ailing chickens convalescing in the house or a paraplegic possum that fancied scrambled eggs for dinner. Practically all of the pets were rescues of some sort with various abnormalities, and the ones that didn’t cling to life well past their prime died prematurely.

I try to find a funny side to everything, and tragedy is no exception. This film’s unrelenting march of death has a light side, but hopefully between morbid curiosity and chuckling at the sheer volume of casualties, the audience will find a bit of themselves in this film. “Pickle” examines the depths of one couple’s devotion to their pets while exploring the complicated relationship that we humans have with all animals. If you find a hurt animal that you’re able to help, is it moral to come to its rescue, as we would with a human? Or is it true compassion to let nature take its course?

Amy Nicholson is a documentary filmmaker who lives in New York City. Pickle is her fourth film.

There are many other great short documentaries on through the New York Times OpDocs portal, and I encourage you to explore the collection on your own. As time goes on I will myself add more to this blog, if only to help spread the word about this great resource.