Here in the attached PDF are two nice reports on some of the work we do as part of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.

I know that finding cattle in the National Park has upset some of you. I want to discuss this phenomenon both in the present day and with some historical perspective. Several photos of cattle were posted on the Kenyans for Wildlife Facebook page. Those photos represent three different situations:
1) A view near the border of the Park; the cattle were actually outside the Park and the elephants were inside.

The entire team is starting to feel sorry for some of our females; the most heavily pregnant ladies are starting to look quite tired. Not surprising when you consider that in a 22-month gestation, calves do a final growth spurt in the last month or so of pregnancy.

Prof. Wangari Maathai's passing has stunned us all. Purity Waweru, our Office Manager, said she has lost her role model. Cynthia Moss said on the ATE FaceBook page, "This is a great loss to Kenya and the world. She was an amazing woman; we must all try to follow in her footsteps."

By Otto Bakano (AFP)

Read the complete article

NAROK, Kenya — Kenyan rangers on Thursday began relocating 50 rampaging elephants to the renowned Maasai Mara game reserve to stem rising human deaths and property destruction in outlying villages.

I decided to write this month's blog entry about the EAs quite a few weeks ago. Imagine my disappointment then when I couldn't find them, even to take any photos to put up here on the website. As you'll see from the blog post, not getting data on the EA family is something I'm learning to live with, but they just spent about a week right in the centre of Longinye swamp, where any photos I took would just be dark grey blobs on a sea of green.

I'm posting a link to a fascinating interview with Toni Frohof on whales. There is so much overlap in what she's looking at in whales and dolphins and what we're trying to understand in elephants that I thought it was worth posting this interview. http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/q-and-as/the-social-live...

Amboseli Elephants are renowned for their tolerance to close proximity to human beings. This makes them easy to study and offers a close wildlife encounter to tourists. The lack of fear is mostly displayed by individuals and families that use and forage in conflict-free areas and by those that mainly use the park as their home range. It’s a different case with families that are exposed to poaching and human-elephant conflicts: they won’t let humans get to within fifty metres before taking off in a frenzied run.

A recent report by Esmond Bradley Martin and Lucy Vigne shows that at least 63% of ivory items for sale in China are illegal. See the article at: http://af.reuters.com/article/kenyaNews/idAFL5E7JQ0BB20110829?sp=true

What a month it's been! ATE has been exceptionally busy with attending the ivory burning at Manyani and our collaring operation. Our core monitoring and research activities also continue of course, and I confess it's good to spend more time with the elephants now these big events are over.