World’s Biggest Elephants Webcam
The web camera is located at a ‘watering hole’ at the Tembe Elephant Park in the north-east corner of South Africa, near the Mozambique border. This is a 30 second refresh camera with real time sound. The camera can pan tilt and zoom and is controlled by a remote operator. Unfortunately it doesn’t have infrared, so only the sounds are available at night. Local time is US EST + 6 hours. There is an Elephant Sightings Times chart on the site which shows that elephants visit the water whole most often around 11-12 noon local time i.e. 5-6 am US EST. But even if you’re not an early riser you can still see these magnificent giants up until the African sunset (around 12pm noon US EST).
The Tembe Elephant Reserve is situated in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The local subspecies are THE WORLD’S BIGGEST ELEPHANTS, with males often weighing over 6 metric tons (13,000 lbs !). The reserve was established 1983 to conserve the last free roaming elephant population in this area. Traditionally the elephants used to migrate northwards into Mozambique, but due to pressure put on the population by poachers the elephants resorted to spending most of their time in the dense sand forest areas that has now become part of the Tembe Elephant Reserve. Since protected, the elephant population has began to expand.
An estimated 20,000 elephants are slaughtered annually to supply illegal ivory markets. More and more potentially poached ivory is now offered over the Internet where there is little risk to illegal traders of being detected or prosecuted. Ivory trade anywhere is a threat to elephants everywhere. No trade in ivory should be allowed, especially while domestic ivory markets all over the world remain unregulated. And the legal ivory trade often serves as a cover for the unbelievable levels of illegal trade that encourages poaching across Africa and Asia.
Sign the Petition for a 20 Year Moratorium Against The Trade of Ivory.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I’d like to thank everybody who signed the IFAW petition for the Moratorium Against The Trade of Ivory. Recently as a result of ongoing discussions between IFAW and eBay, the online marketpace has announced a ban on the cross-borders sale of ivory. Full text of the press release follows:
“An IFAW investigation in 2005 uncovered more than 9,000 products made from endangered species available on the Web in just one week across a wide variety of sites, including ivory products.
With 33 national web sites, eBay provides a global online marketplace where practically anyone can trade practically anything. Following the release of IFAW’s Bidding for Extinction report which outlined these shocking results, IFAW met with eBay senior officials in the USA and across Europe. As a result, eBay agreed to ban the cross-border trade in elephant ivory products on its sites around the globe at the end of June.
In its announcement, eBay stated that in addition to this international ban, clearer and stricter policies would be implemented on a national level for in-country ivory auctions. It remains to be seen if their new policies will be effective and actually reduce the number of ivory items offered on their sites. However, it is already clear that IFAW’s pressure on eBay “ including more than 10,000 messages to eBay’s headquarters from IFAW supporters over a single weekend “ helped secure this decision.”