COLOMBO — Over the past two years, Daham Piyasena has lived through momentous times: the worst economic crisis in Sri Lanka’s history, which led to unprecedented public protests that forced…
CENTRAL ACEH, Indonesia — Mak Besan dropped a clutch of cayenne peppers picked from a neighbor’s land in Karang Ampar village into a white canvas bag, her head protected from…
Elephants are known to be “ecosystem engineers,” altering habitats to suit their own needs, but this sometimes comes at a cost to other species. Hedging, or stem snapping, is the…
TEBO, Indonesia — Electrified fences set up around farms are an emerging threat to the critically endangered Sumatran elephant, conservationists told Mongabay Indonesia following a series of deaths this year…
MADI, Nepal — Surya Prasad Paudel, a lean 42-year-old with an aquiline nose, sunken eyes and gray facial hair, stands waveringly in front of his mud house with the sunlight…
KATHMANDU — Asian elephants traverse vast distances, ingesting things they encounter as they retrace the ancient paths their ancestors followed. In doing so, they alter landscapes, create habitats, and earn…
Ten years ago, says Mike Chase, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area was one fluid contiguous elephant habitat. “An elephant could be in Botswana in the morning, midday in Zimbabwe…
KATHMANDU — New rules that were supposed to make it easier for Nepalis affected by human-wildlife conflict to receive relief and compensation have created a bottleneck in the process instead.…
In the more than 10 years since Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe signed a 2011 treaty to create the Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area – the world’s largest…
ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — “He is a king without a crown.” This is how wildlife lovers refer to the majestic elephant Agbo, named after a king from an ancient kingdom…
KATHMANDU — Whenever someone talks to Dev Narayan Mandal about biodiversity and conservation in his native Madhesh province in Nepal, he remembers an incident that took place a few years…
Opening doors may not seem that hard, but when you have a trunk instead of hands, things can get complicated. Researchers tested the problem-solving skills of wild elephants for the…
The state of Assam in northeastern India has one of the highest incidences of human-elephant conflict in the country, with more than 70 people and 80 elephants dying every year…
HARAR, Ethiopia — In the hilly terrain of Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia, Fetiya Ousman, a female wildlife ranger, is leading her team on a patrol. Dressed in a jungle-green…
PU TROM, Cambodia — The quiet life that Sambo leads today seems as distant from her past plight as the searing-hot streets she once trod as a tourist attraction in…
SAROLANGUN, Indonesia — On a night in early July, Solikin was awake chasing elephants past sunrise. The animals had entered the community’s oil palm fields and raised hell, mashing hundreds…
KATHMANDU — New rules make it easier for Nepalis affected by human-wildlife conflict to receive compensation, in a move the government says is necessary but still insufficient to address the…
On May 17, an elephant was killed after a train hit it in the capital Dhaka’s Uttara area. The incident took place in the Court Bari area while two captive…
For the last couple of decades, Bangladesh has been taking on several projects with an aim to protect the wild Asian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus), which is critically endangered in…
COLOMBO — On average one elephant has died each day in Sri Lanka in the first three months of this year, with nearly half of those deaths due to human…
CHITWAN, Nepal — Wild male elephants in search of females to mate with are homing in on captive domestic elephants, in the process posing a threat to human settlements and…
COLOMBO — Each day, as the sun set over the horizon, Thettuwage Tennakoon and his wife would carefully climb up into their treehouse in the middle of their rice field.…
KATHMANDU — On the afternoon of Oct. 28, a wild male elephant attacked and killed a woman herding her sheep at a pasture in the town of Amlekhgunj, in the…
Over the span of 10 years, a team of researchers have been following 102 Asian elephants in Malaysia, collecting more than 600,000 GPS fixes in the process. When they analyzed…
Solving human-wildlife conflict is a complex issue and a pressing concern for a wide variety of endangered species, none more so than the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). People living around…
COLOMBO — Anyone who’d ever seen Maheshakya in the wildernesses of Kebithigollewa in Sri Lanka’s North Central province agreed that, as elephants went, he was an exemplary specimen with large…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Nestled between a vast palm oil plantation and the Sumatran rainforest is Alue Buloh, a hamlet in Cot Girek village, North Aceh district. To reach it,…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on…
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the early hours of July 19, a herd of wild elephants came down from the hills to a crop field located in Rangunia, in Bangladesh’s Chattogram…
COT GIREK, Indonesia — Junaidi, the leader of an elephant patrol team in this Sumatran village, has a daunting task. The large animals, with their forest habitat destroyed, often enter…
KATHMANDU — Throughout much of their range, Asian elephants are regarded as incarnations of the Hindu god Ganesh, the elephant-headed deity of wisdom. But in Nepal, as in neighboring India…
The export of 22 wild-caught elephants from Namibia to the United Arab Emirates in March has raised concerns over their welfare and stoked criticism of how Namibia manages its wildlife.…
