US dentist challenges stories about Zimbabwean hunt and says he was ‘heartbroken’ for staff when he had to close his clinic.
Cecil
By Mark Tran
The American dentist who killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe has expressed dismay at the furore that engulfed his family and staff and said he needed to return to work for his patients.
International March for Elephants, Washington, D.C. Photo Credit; Christina LaMonica Imagery
By; Oyunga Pala
I saw Facebook post of a worn out sole of a sports shoe. The page belonged to outstanding wildlife activist, Jim Justus Nyamu. The post read, “This particular pair of shoe covered 900km or so and now in the store out of race”.
Ever since he started walking to raise awareness 2 years ago, Jim Nyamu has covered over 3000 miles educating the masses on the crisis of Elephant poaching for ivory.
The Digital Divide is; information rich people who have easy access to computers and all the benefits that it provides while others are cut off from computers because of poverty, living in underdeveloped countries or rural areas without Internet access. In “Intermediaries: Bridges Across the Digital Divide”, written by Maung K. Sein and Bjorn Furuholt, both authors attempt to meet the digital divide by introducing Intermediaries. An Intermediary is an instructor who teaches underprivileged people how to read, write, and use computer technology. Sein and Furuholt list three vignettes of Intermediaries; Sengerema Telecentre (STC) in Mwanza region, Tanzania, Sea Boys Internet Café in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Kantor Pelayanan Terpadu (KPT, One-Stop Services) an e-government in the District of Sragen in Indonesia.
“Despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems including; global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.” – Dan Lipinski
Should humans be concerned with the extinction rate?
If humans are not concerned with terrestrial or aquatic extinction they should be, especially when it comes to the trophic cascade of the African Forest Elephant which is a keystone species in Kenya. Trophic cascade is defined as the “cascading effect that a change in the size of one population at the top of the food web has on the population below it.” (Turk & Bensel, 2014) Because of the rapid decline of the African Forest Elephant due to human-wildlife conflict other r-selected and k-selected species that rely on elephant activity for their survival will also be affected.
African Forest Elephants are a lot like humans whereas they are family orientated, social, self-aware, mourn the loss of family members, and the calf’s are dependent upon their mother’s milk the first few years of their life. Without their mother or families to protect them it would only be a matter of time before the calf would succumb to the elements or from a broken heart. (Bradshaw, 2004) Because African Forest Elephants gestation period is roughly two years, when herds of elephants are killed by poachers for their ivory the chances of extinction increases as maturity levels for reproduction do not occur until around 15 years of age. Continue reading
Ivory Free Ohio-IFOH 