|
Young World
Step by step to safety
Photo: AP
Uncanny knack: Of detecting landmines.
Elephants moving into war-ravaged southern Angola from neighbouring countries appear to have developed the ability to avoid the land mines that litter the region, scientists report. Michael Chase, a biologist who has been studying the elephants for seven years, says he first detected the animals’ apparent ability to avoid the mines from satellite-collar tracking images. The elephants are returning in growing numbers to southeast Angola, where thousands of the animals
were massacred during the country’s protracted civil war, said Chase, who heads the non-profit conservation group Elephants Without Borders. Since the end of the war in 2002, elephants have begun to go back to the Luiana Partial Reserve in Angola’s sparsely populated Cuando Cubango province that borders southwest Zambia and Namibia. Chase said that when the initial migration began a number of elephants had their trunks and legs blown off by mines, condemning the animals to agonising deaths. But the elephants that followed since have avoided those areas.
COMPLIED BY ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Young World
|
