IFAW's Animal Rescue Blog

Help IFAW Protect Elephants – Listen to a Sample Recording

Scientific research plays a big role in IFAW's animal welfare campaigns. Our research helps us find workable solutions that benefit everyone involved.

For example, IFAW is currently working with the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University on an Elephant Listening Project. We are recording elephants' low-frequency "infrasounds," or rumbles, which are inaudible to human ears. This acoustic monitoring system enables wildlife experts and regional and national governments to assess and monitor the numbers and health of endangered elephants by eavesdropping on the sounds they make. Click here to listen to a sample recording.

The Elephant Listening Project was founded in 1999 with the primary focus on forest elephants, a sub-species of the African elephant, which live in deep equatorial rainforests where sightings are rare and taking a visual census is impossible. Elephants make powerful infrasonic calls (below the level of human hearing) which travel long distances. Those calls are then analyzed with visual observations to correlate elephant numbers and behaviors. Click here to learn more about how IFAW is saving elephants through Science.

Rare Big Cat Sighting in India's Manas National Park

While traveling to India, especially to its world-renowned national parks, one can never forget about the tigers. India's most charismatic and emblematic animal is the endangered Bengal tiger. While tourists can get a glimpse of this amazing feline in famous parks like Rathambore or Corbett, the truly wild tigers live in Assam in Northeast India. With very limited interaction with humans, Assam's population of tigers are known to be very elusive animals. Kaziranga National Park holds the densest population of Bengal tigers but residents and tourist rarely encounter them. Estimates of the exact population of these tigers are unknown as the only way to conduct a census is by recording pug marks left on the ground and by the occasional motion-activated photo traps.

In Manas National Park, there is an estimated 30 Bengal tigers left. With these numbers in mind, one tends to dismiss a possible encounter while riding the long and bumpy paths into the park. You can imagine how surreal the moment was when all of a sudden one of the forest officials driving with us starting yelling: "Tiger!, Tiger!"

Everybody in the jeep froze and the driver quickly stepped on the breaks. I anxiously turned the video camera on to try and videotape the feline walking on the path a long way ahead, maybe 100 meters in front of us. It was too far to get a good look at it, and as quickly as we had been warned, the big cat disappeared to a side.

In all likelihood, the big cat we encountered was a leopard. Although also a very rare sight, the number of leopards is considerably higher, if this was in fact a leopard it was most definitely a very big one.

Needless to say, the whole experience was exhilarating and a very good sign for Manas National Park. Almost denuded of its wildlife during social conflict in the 80's and 90's, Manas is struggling to recover. IFAW's Rhino and Elephant Rehab and Release projects are a big part of these conservation efforts. During our 3 hour excursion of Manas near the Bhutan border, we were lucky to spot wild elephants, Capped langurs, peacocks and, oh yes, a leopard, or was it a tiger? Watch the video, you be the judge.

Download tiger_or_leopard.wmv

IFAW Wildlife Trade Podcast - Episode 1!

Here it is!  As promised, the first episode of the IFAW Wildlife Trade Podcast!  IFAW's Online Community Coordinator, J.C. Bouvier talks with Wildlife Trade Communications Coordinator Lynn Levine about the current state of affairs confronting IFAW in its efforts protect animals from commercial trade.

For more information about how you can get involved in the effort, please visit ifaw.org.

Download wildlife_trade_news_8_27_2007.mp3

Indian's Manas Vaccination Camp - Digest 8/24-8/28

This digest of posts were compiled from reports contributed by one of the IFAW Emergency Responders on the scene, Michael Booth, who has been photographing and video taping his team's journey throughout this flood ravaged section of the world...he and his team mate Wit Davis filed these reports over a four day period from the teams arrival in India's Manas National Park to their departure from a working vaccination camp where preperations to vaccinate between 4000-5000 livestock were beginning...

24 August

Wit and I have just arrived to the Bansbari Lodge at the gates of Manas National Park. The road today from Guwahati was bumpy and long, but we managed to arrive in spite of road constructions (large portions were swept away by the floods) and some minor electrical problems with our vehicle. Needless to say it was quite an adventure to arrive here.

On the way, we got a much better sense of the damage caused by these floods. Hundreds of people and their cattle were forced to relocate to the sides of the national highway on higher ground after their villages were left underwater by the monsoon rains.

The Bansbari lodge is experiencing tough times after the floods. The main access to this area is cut-off and still underwater so getting here involves taking a much longer and narrower tour through the local villages. Power lines also suffered extensive damage and at the moment the only source of electricity we have is the generator that is switched on for a few hours each night.

The vaccination camp here in Manas started its 10-day project today and we will be joining them early tomorrow morning (2nd day of operations). The idea is to create an 'immune belt' around the south border of Manas National Park. Once this is done, the chances of wild animals getting diseases transmitted by cattle in the area decrease significantly. The northern borders of Manas near Bhutan are free from cattle so no need to set up vaccination programs there.

IFAW Elephant News Podcast - Episode 1!

IFAW's Online Community Coordinator J.C. Bouvier briefly reviews the weeks elephant news highlights with Program Communications Coordinator Colleen Cullen. This will be a weekly series that brings quick audio updates to this blog and Apple's iTunes Music Store.  Search the store for upcoming podcasts on seals and the Protection Against Commercial Trade or PACT campaign...and if you listen in iTunes or your web browser, you can subscribe to the rss feed and get these updates delivered to iTunes on your Mac or PC!

You can listen in your web browser or download the file to your MP3 player.

Download elephant_news_podcast_8_27_07.mp3

India's Manas: A national park with a turbulent past

Manas National Park, located in the far north of the Indian state of Assam and partially in the country of Bhutan, is attempting to recover from a very chaotic past. Manas is a place of picturesque landscapes and ideal wildlife habitat making it unsurprising that many people think it is one of the most beautiful parks in the world. There is just one very important thing missing: wildlife.

Until the 1980's and 90's Manas was teeming with wildlife. Then political conflict hit the area and people practically emptied the park of animals. Before the conflict Manas boasted 100 rhino. Until last year, there were none.

With the conflict under control three organizations including IFAW, the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), and the Assam Forest Department are working to repopulate the park. The habitat makes it an ideal location to release rhinos and elephants rehabilitated at the Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation near Kaziranga. So far three rhinos have been released and six elephants, all of them orphaned either due to poaching of the mothers or permanent displacement from natal herds during times of floods.

Hopefully rehabilitation programs such as this will prove successful for this endangered species. It would be a shame to have such ideal habitat go unused in a world where good wildlife habitat is shrinking.

On the Ground in Chetumal - August 24-27, 2007

The International Fund for Animal Welfare deployed two staff members to join up with existing on the ground staff in Chetumal, Mexico in an effort to asses the extent of the damage caused by the landing of Hurricane Dean, at the time a catagory 5 storm...the largest since 1992. IFAW's Chris Cutter provided this detailed update a yesterday.

August 24, 2007 Chetumal Zoo

Our team visits the zoo in Chetumal. It is absolutely destroyed. Completely. 80% of the trees were damaged in the storm and most seem to be laying on the ground, uprooted, or crashed into bent and broken animal enclosures. The animals are okay, for now, but the zoo is completely decimated. IFAW talks about helping the animals with vaccines and medicine immediately. We also plan to talk with other animal welfare groups to discuss a plan for rehabilitating the zoo in such a way to benefit the animals. The zoo has lions, deer, a hippopatumus, jaguars, birds, pigs and more. All these animals will need some kind of help.

On a more positive note we travel out to CIVS. As promised the government has sent a team to clear the road. Several kilometers are now passable. A team is at the CIVS center tending to the animals, it looks like they will recover.

We have recieved updates from several other groups that IFAW is networking and collaborating with. Everything in Quintana Roo seems to be okay for the moment. We make arrangements to fly to Mexico City the following day to continue to assess the path of Hurricane Dean as it moved through central Mexico.

Indian Flooding Update - Breakfast Baby Elephant Style.

Wit Davis, IFAW ER Responder on the scene in India, filed this report from the field.

This morning we got up early to head to the WTI/IFAW Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) where we watched the formula being prepared for two baby elephants and then had the great opportunity to observe the feedings. There are currently four orphaned elephants at the center but only the two youngest still get milk. Of course, the older ones who are no more than three years old get very jealous of the little ones. Just like with human babies elephants need to learn how to feed themselves and it is a whole lot easier to be handed a bottle than to try to grab food with your trunk and get the food into your mouth! Like the older ones trying to steal milk the littlest one kept trying to take grass from the older elephants' mouths. This would be appropriate with elders in the wild but given the close proximity of their age and perhaps the fact that they are an artificial herd (a group of elephants who are not related) the older ones aren't yet ready to accept the baby's thievery.

The youngest elephant is only about six months old and was rescued during this year's floods. It's terrific to see him healthy and well and fast on his way to rehabilitation and release. Hopefully the two older ones will be released in Manas later this year joining the first ever released elephants in India!

On the Road Near Kaziranga - India Update

Once the strike near Kaziranga was over we began our slow trip to Manas National Park. In good conditions the drive from Kaziranga to Guwahati would take about seven hours but after the flood we were forced to split it into two days.

Our first day was spent driving to the city of Guwahati. The drive was long but had its high points including our driver's obligatory stop at the Goddess of Power's Residence to pick up incense, flowers, and small seeds or beans so that we could pay our respect and maybe receive some added power. The incense was lit and put in the holiest of places: the stereo face-plate. We arrived in Guwahati perhaps feeling a little more powerful or, if nothing else, smelling a bit like incense.

Indian Flooding Update - Hyacinth, Hyacinth Everywhere and no Water to Drink

Wit Davis, IFAW ER Responder on the scene in India, filed this report from the field.

After spending six weeks of my life working with a team to remove thousands of pounds of invasive water hyacinth from a water reservoir in California, I sincerely hoped to never see the *%@! stuff again! Boy was I disappointed to arrive in Kaziranga to find out that water hyacinth, which is native to the region and is waging a war on most of the park's waterways, and while another exotic invasive plant species called Mimosa is reducing the grassland available for rhinos and other animals in the park.

The hyacinth moves in and if it's not removed quickly enough islands will form. Since Kaziranga is the only safe haven for many animals in the region including boasting the largest population of Asiatic One-Horned Rhinoceros and the densest population of Bengal Tigers anywhere, it is critical to protect their habitats. The park is undertaking a number of programs to fight off the onslaught of these invasive species but it's a difficult battle. yet areas that were completely cleared of the stuff this January have already become overgrown again. Hopefully they will keep up the good work and eventually the war will be won.