Wildlife - Elephants

Angelique Todd has spent the past 15 years working as a WWF primate specialist in the Central African Republic – specifically in Dzanga-Sangha, one of the last strongholds for iconic species like forest elephants and lowland gorillas. Six weeks ago, a government coup in the country turned her life, and our vital conservation work, upside-down [...]

Sometimes when people think policy, they think boring – talking about document wording, and who’s saying what on which issues. For me it’s exciting – there’s a rush when a delegate repeats on the floor what you’ve said in the lunch break – and highly important, because without the right policies in place you can’t [...]

It’s been an unusual CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP) so far. A big debate on secret voting earlier on delayed the main agenda, so we’ve only today gotten on to some of the higher profile agenda items we’re here to discuss. Elephant discussions began and a number of Parties, including the EU member states, [...]

Stay tuned for the latest updates from the CITES conference in Bangkok, Thailand. As things develop, we’ll update you with the latest news and blogs via Storify. [View the story "We want to give CITES teeth" on Storify]

The longer scientists study elephants, the more we realise how special they are. These are creatures that live for around 65 years. Females teach younger elephants about the geography and food of their world, and how to raise young. Elephants display many of the emotions we associate with humans: for example, they love, play and [...]

Dr Kate Evans is the director and founder of Elephants for Africa. She started her research over a decade ago, looking at adolescent male elephants in the Okavango Delta and how they socialise – with an emphasis on how captive-bred animals would react in a wild environment. Here she talks about how complex these beautiful [...]

Greetings again this October people of Wales, I am happy to share with you updates from Kenya. It gives me great pleasure to continue interacting with you on a regular basis to communicate and share the milestones we are achieving together in Kwale. Your continued support is helping us accomplish great things; we are very [...]

Over 300 elephants killed by poachers in just a few weeks. That’s a shocking statistic in itself. But it gets a whole lot worse when you realise that this happened in just one national park. I guess you can imagine how I felt when I first heard from colleagues in Cameroon – how a gang [...]

I’m an optimist by nature, but during my six years working here at WWF to stop the illegal wildlife trade, I’ve seen and heard about the deaths of a lot of animals – and it can be hugely depressing. Believe me, if you’re upset by the photos we sometimes publish of animals that have been [...]

The air is acrid and the flames are scorching the grass around this huge bonfire. I am in Gabon, central Africa, watching tonnes of elephant ivory go up in smoke. There are 1,293 elephant tusks and a huge amount of confiscated ivory carved into a myriad of products fuelling this fire. Everything has been independently [...]