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To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (19597)9/24/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: scotty  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 116786
 
Is there a connection between Long Term Credit Bank of Japan and Long Term Capital Management?




To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (19597)9/24/1998 9:09:00 PM
From: goldsnow  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 116786
 
Dollar poachers should learn a lesson...

Nature foils poachers as elephants shed tusks
By David Blair in Kampala

NATURE is fighting back against Uganda's ivory poachers by dramatically increasing the number of elephants born without tusks, scientists say.

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Researchers at the Queen Elizabeth National Park have studied the phenomenon and believe it has brought about a remarkable recovery of the elephant population after decades of uncontrolled poaching.

Dr Eve Abe, a Cambridge-educated elephant specialist at the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, said: "A survey I conducted found that up to 30 per cent of a sample of adult elephants in the Queen Elizabeth Park do not have tusks." Dr Abe's latest report found that 15.5 per cent of the whole female population were tuskless. In the male elephant population the level was 9.5 per cent.

A study of the same area in 1930 found only one per cent of elephants were without ivory, due to rare mutations. Dr Abe explained the increase as "a genetic response to the poaching problem". Poachers targeted the tuskers and ignored those without ivory, ensuring that an unusually high number of tuskless survivors passed their genes down through the generations.

Dr Abe said: "We are left with the genes which result in elephants being born without ivory. This is the elephant's way of saving itself from extinction." Civil war and massive poaching ravaged Uganda's elephant herd during the Seventies and Eighties. In 1963 there were 3,500 animals in the Queen Elizabeth Park, but by 1992 this had fallen to around 200. A dramatic recovery is now taking place. Today the elephant population stands at 1,200 and is growing rapidly.

Anooti Latif, the park's chief warden, said: "Our elephant population is quickly reviving. This is due to reproduction, migration of animals to escape the war in the Congo but also to the decline in poaching."

As the number of tuskless elephants has risen, so poaching has declined. "Commercial poaching is now at a minimal level," Mr Latif said. "The only problem we have is poaching by the local people, mainly for food." He said that, after decades of decline, "we are beginning to be worried about having too many elephants."

Marcel Onen, a field researcher at the park, said: "In every herd you see 40 or 50 elephants without tusks. The big herds are now returning."

President Yoweri Museveni's government has made the revival of the tourist industry a high priority. The Wildlife Authority hopes that the return of large elephant herds to the Queen Elizabeth Park will attract an increasing number of visitors.