Africa elephants 'face survival threat' from poaching. Elephant conservationists say demand for ivory remains high. The survival of Africa's elephants is under threat, with estimates suggesting more than 20,000 were killed in 2013, a report says. The office of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) said poaching levels were far above the elephant birth rate. However, the report said poaching numbers had dropped slightly compared to the previous two years. Transnational organised crime appeared to be involved in the trade, it added. Cites, which is based in Geneva, is responsible for regulating the international trade in more than 35,000 species of plants and animals. Ivory tusks and products are displayed after the official start of the destruction of confiscated ivory in Hong Kong 15 May 2014 China has started to destroy seized ivory in public There are a number of interesting signals in these latest figures, perhaps indicating that the tougher line being taken by Cites is bearing fruit. For the first time, more large-scale consignments of ivory have been seized in Africa rather than in Asia. This is down to better policing in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and perhaps a slight downturn in demand from the key markets such as China, which carried out the first public destruction of ivory earlier this year. There is also the rise in demand in China for legal mammoth ivory that is mainly exported from Russia, which may also indicate a growing awareness of the connection to elephants and a willingness to look at alternatives.

Indian tigers face threat due to lack of genetic diversity. Tigers need genetic diversity to survive. India's tigers are facing extinction owing to a collapse in the variety of their mating partners, say Cardiff University researchers. They found that 93% of DNA variants found in tigers shot the period of the British Raj were not present in tigers today Prof Mike Bruford said the genetic diversity needed for the species to survive had been "lost dramatically". There are fewer than 2,000 tigers left worldwide, 60% in India. The Cardiff university team collaborated with the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India on the research. They had unprecedented access to the Natural History Museum of London's tiger collection which allowed them to identify the DNA variants in the tigers killed in the British Raj period from 1858 to 1947 but which have disappeared today. Mechanised trophy hunting reduced the animal's numbers from 40,000 in a mere 100 years. The territory occupied by the tiger has declined more than 50% during the last three generations and mating now only occurs in 7% of its historical territory. A tiger hunt on the back of elephants in India in 1912 A tiger hunt on the back of elephants in India in 1912 Prof Bruford of the Cardiff School of Biosciences was one of the research's lead authors. He said: "We found that genetic diversity has been lost dramatically compared to the Raj tigers and what diversity remains has become much more subdivided into the small (20-120 individual) populations that exist today.

Spoon-billed sandpipers threatened by trapping in China

Endangered spoon-billed sandpipers arriving at their wintering grounds in China are being threatened by nets designed to trap shorebirds.

The spoon-billed sandpiper is one of the world's rarest birds. Recent sightings of the bird at several new sites along the coast of southern China indicate the species is more widespread than thought. But the study also found evidence of large-scale shorebird trapping using "mist nets" in some of these key areas. Last month four spoon-billed sandpipers were sighted at new wintering grounds in Fucheng, south-west Guangdong Province: the latest evidence that the bird is migrating to more widespread areas in China than previously known.

 
Wonderful waders

Members of the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society discovered a group of the critically endangered birds in partially drained fishponds in Fucheng.

Rhinos and elephants: the secret lives of Africa's giants

Rhinos and elephants have a range of remarkable behaviours and adaptations, many of which we are only just learning.

Emerging through the twilight, a beast lumbers forward, sniffing, snorting, searching for something.

One of the largest animals to walk the earth, it is on a surprising mission.

This black rhino is embarking on a midnight journey, seeking out other rhinos

in the dark to socialise and mate with, sharing some never-before-seen tender moments.
 
Because despite their size, we are only just beginning to notice some remarkable behaviours and adaptations of elephants and rhinos.

These two groups are the largest terrestrial animals.

The three species of elephant range from 5.5 tonnes for an average male African bush elephant to 2.7 tonnes for female Asian elephants. Rhinos, of which there are five species, can exceed 3.5 tonnes.

Their size makes them relatively easy to spot and an easy target for poachers, who continue to hunt both groups of large mammal in significant numbers: elephants mainly for ivory in their tusks and rhinos for their horns.

They have all been extensively studied by scientists, in the field and also in wildlife parks, breeding centres and zoos.

But much about them, and what they get up to, remains a mystery, with many discoveries into their behaviour and adaptations only being made recently.

The world's rarest whale has been identified - two years

after two of them washed up in New Zealand.

An adult female spade-toothed beaked whale and her calf were found beached in

2010, but they were mistaken for a more common type of whale and buried.

When tests were done about six months later on samples taken from the

mammals, they showed they were actually the rare spade-toothed beaked kind.

The whales are so rare that nobody has ever seen one alive.

This year scientists returned

to dig out the skeletons of the two whales, so they could study them.

It wasn't an easy task and

they found the mother's skull had been washed out to sea.

Previously, only skull

fragments have been discovered and that's only happened three times.

The spade-toothed beaked whale

The spade-toothed beaked whale

gets its name because males have wide, blade-like, tusk teeth.

Both males and females have

beaks which make them look like dolphins.

Not much is known about the

whales, except that they live in the South Pacific Ocean and eat mainly squid.