National Geographic: Elephants in Cameroon and Chad face Imminent Threat

  Posted by Laurel Neme in A Voice for Elephants on December 5, 2012         Gangs of heavily armed elephant poachers have crossed the Central African Republic (CAR) from Sudan and are reported to be close to the southern Chad and northern Cameroon borders. Several columns of Sudanese poachers, comprising between 150 to 200 men riding on…

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Animal Planet: Rescued Elephant Orphan Adopted by New Herd

08/22/2012 GUEST POST ALERT:Today’s guest post comes from Wildlife expert Laurel A. Neme, Ph.D., author of Animal Investigators: How the World’s First Wildlife Forensics Lab is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species and a regular contributor to Mongabay.com, where she broke the story on recent poaching of Chad’s elephants.  Learn more about Laurel at LaurelNeme.com. Toto Finds a…

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Sumatran rhinos survive in northern Sumatra

Another piece of good news – this time related to the Sumatran rhino and reported on Mongabay.com. Using remote camera traps, wildlife rangers confirm the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) still inhabits the Leuser ecosystem in northern Sumatra, making that forest the only place on the Earth where Sumatran tigers, orangutans, elephants, and rhinos survive in…

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Mongabay.com: Elephant slaughter continues in Chad, another baby rescued

Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.comAugust 07, 2012 ‘Toto’, a 3-week-old male elephant rescued by SOS Elephants. Photo courtesy of SOS Elephants Elephant poaching persists in southwestern Chad as poachers slaughtered more elephants on August 3, the second time in less than two weeks. In the first attack, the week of July 23, poachers killed 34…

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Mongabay.com: President of Chad sends troops after elephant poachers

By Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.comAugust 03, 2012 Following the July 24 massacre of dozens of elephants in southwestern Chad, President Idriss Deby Itno sent helicopters to the Mayo Lemie – Chari Baguiri area to catch the poachers, according to Stephanie Vergniault, president of SOS Elephants, a wildlife NGO. President Deby also gave orders to check all the…

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Mongabay.com: Dozens of Elephants Massacred in Chad

Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.comJuly 26, 2012 Poachers killed at least 30 elephants in southwestern Chad during the early hours of Tuesday, July 24. During the night, Stephanie Vergniault, president of the organization SOS Elephants, described on her Facebook page how a group of armed horsemen chased a herd of elephants with “war weapons near…

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Mongabay.com: The dark side of new species discovery

By Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.com December 21, 2011  This interview originally aired on March 14, 2011. It was transcribed by Kirstin Fagan. Part 1 of this interviewScientists and the public usually rejoice when a new species is discovered. But biologist Bryan Stuart has learned the hard way that the discovery of new species, especially when that…

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Mongabay.com: Seahorses Under Stress

By Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.com November 21, 2011 This interview originally aired on January 17, 2011. It was transcribed by Dustin Circe. With about 25 million seahorses sold each year, global consumption of seahorses is massive. They’re used in traditional Asian medicine and also sold as curios and aquarium pets. Over the last decade, overexploitation and habitat…

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