In the August issue of Vanity Fair, which is on the newsstands now, there is a disturbing and very revealing article on the poaching of elephants in Africa. I urge you all to read it. Attached below is a PDF of the article.

I am proud to announce that we have finally recorded our first successful Elephant birth of 2011 after a stillbirth that was witnessed by Katito and Graeme in a previous post. Our records show the last birth dates back seven months ago. This high decline in birth rate correlates with the 2009 drought when few female elephants came into estrus. Elephant breeding patterns are mostly determined by the availability of food, and they may conceive in response to a good rainfall period, resulting in an increased birth number 21 – 23 months later.

Hi everyone,

Here is the new image gallery for the latest post on my IFAW blog, about why matriarchs are so important in elephant society.

I'd like to encourage people to check out the excellent work IFAW is doing for elephant conservation across Africa and Asia, and especially Azzedine Downes' recent post on the Elephant E8 meeting. As Cynthia posted on our Facebook page, ATE are very pleased to be working with our IFAW colleagues, and thankful for their generous support of our work.

Two more articles about our new book have appeared in the British press. They describe some of the findings from The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal. One was in the London Sunday Times and the other in the Daily Mail. You can read the Daily Mail direct, but the Sunday Times requires a subscription. I have attached PDF files of both articles.

I did an interview about Amboseli, the elephants and our new book for New Scientist a couple of weeks ago. It has appeared in the 28 May issue of the magazine. I am not able to link directly to the article because it requires a subscription, but they have given permission to post a PDF of the article. Click on the attachment and you will be able to see the interview.

Early this morning Graeme and I were looking for family groups in the East of the park for our playback experiments. We sighted the LB family moving quickly towards a small group 250 m distant. We drove to the family (which turned out to be the HB group) and I immediately noticed that they were bunched together in a distinctive formation, which is a good indication that there may have been a recent birth.

The Oakland Zoo has been supporting the Amboseli Elephant Research Project yearly for 15 years through its Celebrating Elephants Day at the zoo. They have raised over $200,000 for us over those years and that support has been crucial and very much appreciated.