Wildlife

Surplus Elephants

African conservationists next month will begin moving up to 500 elephants from several parts of the continent to a Malawi wildlife reserve, where wildlife advocates eventually hope to protect the pachyderms from being poached into extinction.

The elephants will be tranquilized with darts fired from helicopters, then trucked to the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve.

The nonprofit group African Parks, based in Johannesburg, plans to relocate “surplus elephants” from areas where growing populations are causing conflict and ecological damage.

Pollution of the Deep

High levels of man-made persistent organic pollutants have been found in tiny creatures collected in the world’s deepest ocean trenches.

Shrimplike crustaceans, called amphipods, captured in the Marianas Trench and the Kermadec Trench were found contaminated with PCBs, once used in plastics manufacturing, and PBDEs, which are the main ingredients in flame retardants.

The levels of PCBs in the Marianas Trench amphipods were higher than in the estuaries of China’s most polluted rivers, researcher Alan Jamieson told Nature.