African Elephant Stories

In the first project of its kind in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, WWF—along with the Kenyan Wildlife Service and Narok County Council—is now collaring elephants.

WWF is partnering with the Kenyan Wildlife Service and Narok County Council to collar matriarch elephants in the Maasai Mara reserve to track them as they move inside and outside of the reserve, in order to better understand how to mitigate human wildlife conflict and to maintain vital wildlife corridors.

WWF’s African Elephant Program funded a research project that used techniques from economics and statistics to better understand the value of elephant conservation to local economies in Africa.

On June 2, 2016, the US Fish & Wildlife Service announced new federal regulations implementing a nearly complete ban on commercial ivory trade in the United States.

This World Elephant Day, it’s important to celebrate the positive momentum being taken to save this iconic species. Poaching trends in Africa are down from the peak of 2011, and governments, NGOs and individuals around the globe have made significant strides in 2016 to fight the elephant ivory trade that fuels poaching.

Rampant ivory poaching has reduced the elephant population in Tanzania’s oldest and largest protected area by 90 percent in fewer than 40 years. WWF is sounding the alarm for urgent action in combating wildlife crime in the reserve.

The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) is home to almost half of Africa’s elephants, as well as an array of other animals such as African wild dogs, hippos, rhinos, lions, African buffalo, zebras, crocodiles, and cheetahs. Learn more about KAZA and what WWF is doing for it.

The animal kingdom is flush with moms that take the time to teach their babies how to find food and protect themselves against the elements.

We’ve all seen photographs of majestic elephants sporting long, off-white tusks on either side of their trunks. This ivory is both beautiful on the animals and essential to the species’ survival. But what exactly is it?

A trip to Kenya to see the animals of the plains

In a landscape largely undocumented by science, a researcher and a photographer team up to illuminate more than the night

Over two tons of elephant tusks, carved ivory, and trinkets in Thailand—most of it from elephants poached a continent away in Africa—made its way into a machine that ground the ivory into chips. The solemn ceremony to destroy Thailand’s illegal ivory follows a number of important laws the country passed to crack down on the illegal elephant ivory trade.

An enormous machine roared to life pulverizing more than one ton of illegal elephant ivory tusks, trinkets and souvenirs in the heart of New York City today. The ivory crush in Times Square sent a dramatic message to the world that the United States will not tolerate elephant ivory trafficking. 

We all know how great moms can be. The same is true in parts of the wild. Take a look at a few images of animals with their parents.

Thailand has until the end of March 2015 to take measures to shut down domestic trade in illegal elephant ivory or it will face trade sanctions under the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), which met in Geneva last July.

With demand for elephant ivory at an all-time high, the campaign asks people to imagine a life without elephants by publicly removing the Thai letter representing elephants—“Chor Chang”—from their names. The Thai word for elephant, “Chang,” starts with the letter in the Thai alphabet called “Chor”. By removing Chor Chang from their names, Thai people are making a statement that they want the illegal trade in elephant ivory to stop or their beloved national animal—the elephant—could disappear.

Data helps more than 500 village game scouts more effectively monitor species in Tanzania

This move indicates efforts by the Hong Kong government to combat the illegal elephant ivory trade, which is fueling an elephant poaching crisis. Last year, an estimated 30,000 elephants were slaughtered to feed the black market trade in ivory.