#daphne-sheldrick

#daphne-sheldrick

The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings, with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg annually. Improving farming methods and conserving the watershed has helped me to feed and educate my six children.

Somebody sent to this world to try to give people hope in dark times, because without hope, we fall into apathy and do nothing, and in the dark times that we are living in now, if people don't have hope, we're doomed. How can we bring little children into this dark world we've created and let them be surrounded by people who've given up?

Among African elephants, "Big Tuskers" refers to bulls that grow tusks so long they sometimes scrape the ground. Each one can weigh well over 100 pounds. These giant, ivory incisors continually grow throughout an elephant's life, and males typically have much larger tusks than females.

Mary Parsons, a client, expressed her concerns, stating, 'They do anything, they do blood transfusions for birds, CT scans, ultrasounds, they are in a different league. I am worried that animals will die.'

On a cool, rainy afternoon in the wilds of Laikipia, Kenya, I am lying in savasana, or corpse pose, beside a log fire in the pool house of Enasoit Camp. The teacher, Laura Bunting, gently intones a yoga nidra to our small, all-female group, during which I slip in and out of a hypnotic half-light state, only vaguely aware of the sound of rain on the thatched roof and the percussive efforts of a nearby woodpecker.

The House of Elements, set to become the crown jewel of Orientarium Zoo in Łódź, Poland, takes the classical elements (earth, ice, water, fire, and air) and transforms them into a 6,000-square-meter narrative experience. Rather than designing a building where you walk from exhibit to exhibit, VMA created a continuous downward-then-upward journey that mirrors the evolution of life itself. Designer: VMA Design Studio for Orientarium Zoo

Partly sunny with a high around 34 today. A low near 18 overnight. The National Museum of African American History & Culture will be closed today due to "complications involving the recent winter storm." You can find me on Bluesky, I'm @abeaujon.87 on Signal, and there's a link to my email address below. This roundup is available as a morning email newsletter. Sign up here.

The list of feats Andrew Schulz has witnessed an elephant perform with its trunk is as long as, well, an elephant's trunk. These powerful proboscises are strong enough to push over 900 pound trees and gentle enough to pick up a tortilla chip without breaking it. They can snuffle along the ground to sense vibrations from far-off herd movements. They can be used to solve puzzles, peel bananas, craft tools, console a fellow pachyderm or a human friend.

In Texas, the Houston Zoo has prepared its buildings and barns with heaters designed to withstand extreme conditions, the zoo said in a blog post on Friday. Animals will have access to extra hay and bedding, and food was stocked in advance. Across the Zoo, sensitive plants are being protected with coverings, and generators are positioned to provide backup power if needed, the blog post said.

There are a lot of unanswered possibly unanswerable questions in the air at the moment. Questions such as what prompts a husband to drug his wife and, for a decade, invite strange men over to his house to rape her while she lies unconscious in the marital bed? Or: what kind of a person do you have to be to hang around with a convicted child sexual offender and billionaire who is exercising his perversions in plain sight,

Demand for safari holidays is growing, so how can you do it without harming animals, people or the landscape? Last summer, images were shared of a scene in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park - a large group of jeeps and dozens of tourists standing outside taking pictures of 'The Great Migration' and blocking wildebeests' traditional crossing point. Jeep traffic jams have also been widely reported in other parks, including Sri Lanka's Yala, known for its high density of leopards.

A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints. The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.

As the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) enters its 200th year as a charity, keepers at London Zoo have started counting every animal for its annual stocktake. The zoo is home to more than 8,000 animals — from a colony of leafcutter ants to critically endangered Asiatic lions. ZSL, which runs London Zoo, was founded in 1826 as science-led conservation charity working to protect species, restore ecosystems and help wildlife and people coexist.

In late 2025, Interpol coordinated a global operation across 134 nations, seizing roughly 30,000 live animals, confiscating illegal plant and timber products, and identifying about 1,100 suspected wildlife traffickers for national police to investigate. Wildlife trafficking is one of the most lucrative illicit industries worldwide. It nets between US$7 billion and $23 billion per year, according to the Global Environment Facility, a group of nearly 200 nations as well as businesses and nonprofits that fund environmental improvement and protection projects.