Wildlife Conservation and Protection

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Populations of the tiny crustacean - a key food source for whales and dolphins - have declined by 80% since 1970 due mainly to demand for omega-3 health supplements

Satellite data analysis suggests climate-induced algal blooms could be behind hundreds of deaths in Botswana that sparked flurry of theories in 2020

More than 350 elephants that died in mysterious circumstances probably drank toxic water, according to a new paper that warns of an “alarming trend” in climate-induced poisoning.

Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20241122020217/https://www.lpzoo.org/otters-spotted-on-zoo-wildlife-cameras-for-the-first-time-in-chicagoland/

Significance

Despite the conservation importance of documenting temporal population trends of African elephants, we lack a comprehensive assessment of recent changes in the world’s largest terrestrial mammal. This assessment summarizes site-level trends in density over five decades from hundreds of surveys conducted across Africa on the forest and savannah elephant species. Both species have experienced substantial declines at the majority of survey sites. Forest elephant sites have declined on average by 90%, whereas savanna elephant sites have declined by 70% over the study period. However, savannah elephants have also demonstrated some increases, indicating that the threats and challenges elephants face are not the same everywhere. From the successes, we can learn how to better protect elephants across their range.