This Could Be the Worst Year for Rhino Poaching

As many as 12 poaching groups are lurking in South Africa’s 7,500-square-mile Kruger National Park at any given time, Edna Molewa, the country’s environmental affairs minister, said on Sunday.  That’s led to an increase in rhinoceroses killed by poachers within park boundaries, where nearly half of South Africa’s population of white rhinos resides.

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Airlines Ban Transporting Exotic Trophy Animals

As the outrage over the recent killing of a famed Zimbabwe lion — and big-game hunting in general — ripples across the globe, even the airlines are now weighing in and issuing bans on the transport of exotic trophy animals.  On Monday, Delta Air Lines — the only U.S. carrier with direct service to South Africa — issued the following statement that said it was banning the shipment of five type of large animals that are typically shipped as trophies:  Effective immediately, Delta will officially ban shipment of all lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo trophies worldwide as freight. Prior to this ban, Delta's strict acceptance policy called for absolute compliance with all government regulations regarding protected species. Delta will also review acceptance policies of other hunting trophies with appropriate government agencies and other organizations supporting legal shipments.

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He Didn’t Know How Long His Puppy Had To Live So He Filmed Her Every Day

Dave Meinert made a beautiful film of his dog Pegasus as she grew up.   This video has gone hugely viral in the last week.  It was made by Dave Meinert, 34, a film-maker from South Africa, and it stars Pegasus.Meinert rescued her from backyard breeders when she was a puppy.  He told BuzzFeed: “Most of her siblings died or were deformed. I’ll never know what was wrong.”  He said: “She saw seven vets in the beginning. She’s just a dog that’s always sick and always, always happy.”

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Bomb Sniffing Elephants in South Africa

Armed with a sharp sense of smell, dogs have a long history of detecting explosives for their human handlers. Trained rats sniff out land mines from old African wars. In Croatia, researchers have tried to train bees to identify TNT.  Now elephants. New research conducted in South Africa and involving the U.S. military shows they excel at identifying explosives by smell, stirring speculation about whether their extraordinary ability can save lives.

http://tinyurl.com/ou96m6l

Video: Porcupine Fends Off 17 Lions

Now this is something you don't see every day: a porcupine defending itself from not one, not two, but 17 lions.  The incredible nighttime spectacle was caught on video by Luc Beaumont, a guide at the Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa. The porcupine can be seen using its quills to ward off 13 lionesses and four male lions at the reserve.  "As a guide I have a bucket list of various sightings that I dream of seeing," Beaumont wrote in a blog post about the unusual encounter. "The more time I spend in the bush, the more amazing things I have seen over the years, the more outrageous my bucket list seems to become. A few nights ago, I managed to tick one major sighting off my bucket list that I have been hoping, dreaming and imagining for many years."

http://tinyurl.com/q6jt442

Video: Baby Rhino Plays With His Lamb Sidekick

If anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s this baby rhino.Back in May, rangers at a game reserve in South Africa found the three-month-old calf next to his mother, who had been killed and poached for her horn. The rangers called staffers at the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre to the scene.  “It was a devastating sight, as the tiny animal would not leave her side and was crying inconsolably for her,” according to HESC’s website.

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Do Animals Get Drunk on Purpose?

In South Africa, local legend has it that the elephants like to get drunk. They seek out the marula tree, overindulge on its sweet fruits, and enjoy the intoxicating effects of the slightly fermented juice.  Tales of the tipsy pachyderms go back at least two centuries. In the 1830s, a French naturalist called Adulphe Delegorgue described stories from his Zulu guides of mysteriously aggressive behaviour in male elephants after they fed on the marula fruits. "The elephant has in common with man a predilection for a gentle warming of the brain induced by fruit which has been fermented by the action of the sun," wrote Delegorgue.

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Thousands Of Ukraine's Zoo Animals May Soon Starve

As political unrest continues to threaten the peace in Ukraine, thousands of animals at one of the country's zoos are at the brink of starvation, an international conservation group announced this week.  The Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization, a nonprofit headquartered in South Africa, told The Huffington Post there has been a severe scarcity of food and medical supplies for the estimated 5,700 animals at the 104-year-old Nikolaev Zoo, located in southern Ukraine, since government funding for the zoo dried up a few weeks ago.  "The fact is, they were just two days away from totally running out of food for the carnivores when we found out about this and began providing meat," the organization's international president, Barbara Wiseman, told HuffPost via email. "The rest of the animals were just two weeks away from running out of food."

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-Igor Purlantov

Seal Survives By a Nose

This lucky seal avoided a grisly death in the jaws of a great white shark — by a nose.  The marine mammal was swimming with a pod of pals off the coast of South Africa when the killer fish tried turning it into lunch.  But the massive predator missed its mark as it breached the surface, nailing the seal with its snout — instead of row after row of razor-sharp teeth.  

http://tinyurl.com/kbv99cs

Video: It Ain't No Thang: Dog Herds Siberian Tigers

Solo, a border collie at a South African wildlife reserve, has apparently found sheep herding life too mundane for his liking. In actuality, Solo doesn't have any sheep to herd, so he used his natural instincts with an entirely different species - Siberian Tigers.

http://tinyurl.com/6vm38k4

South Africa Rhinos To Get Micro-chipped, Hunt Rules Tightened

South Africa has tightened rules on rhino hunts and will use micro-chips and DNA profiling to counter a poaching bloodbath that has killed 171 animals this year, the environment minister said Monday.

http://tinyurl.com/6rzh6yf

Itty Bitty Baby Pygmy Hippo Living The Good Life

After being rejected by his mother (how is this possible with a face like that?!) an adorable 6-day-old pygmy hippo calf named Harry is living the good life with his handlers at the Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa.

http://tinyurl.com/7uw4ml6

Poisonous Rhino's Deter Poachers in South Africa

Last year, radioactive boars frustrated hunters in Germany. This year poisonous rhinoceroses are discouraging poachers in South Africa. Like the boars, the rhinos are not a product of nature, but a result of human actions. In this case though, the toxic treatment was intentional.

http://tinyurl.com/6bo8g28