In Volume 10, nr. 1:

Elephant herd shot dead in South-Africa and babies removed
In our last issue we wrote about the reopening of discussions in South Africa about culling. The opinions over there were conflicting. But the government stated that there would be absolutely no culling in the near future. Now it seems that evil-minded people took this as an advance on the possible decision of resumed culling. And so the slaughter of elephants begins.

Number of Elephants is rising, but with many foot-notes
The AfESG constantly collects and compiles information on the elephant distribution, abundance and movement patterns from a wide network of scientists and conservationists in all thirty-seven African elephant range states, and feeds that information into the Database. A major report is published in print every three years: the African Elephant Status Report. The latest report at the end of 2002 shows figures which, at first glance, seem highly optimistic. But foot-notes have been added.

Pepper is the solution
To many, elephants are a mythical symbol of power and wisdom. To rural Africans, they can be a frightening reality. "With the rapid growth in human populations over the past 30 years, large areas of savannah and forest have been converted into agricultural land," explains Noah Sitati, an elephant expert working for the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (Dice) in Kenya. "This forces the elephants into smaller and smaller areas."