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So, how many elephants is too many elephants? It's a question people have wrestled with for ages. Kruger National Park, home to one of Africa's largest elephant populations, has seen their numbers grow from just a handful in the early 1900s to over 31,000 by 2020. That's a lot of elephants! A recent study using smarter aerial surveys and fancy math gives us a more clear picture of just how fast these gentle giants are multiplying. Turns out, since 2013, their numbers have been growing by about 5.3% each year.

Robust abundance estimates of wild animal populations are needed to inform management policies and are often obtained through mark–recapture (MR) studies. Visual methods are commonly used, which limits data collection to daylight hours and good weather conditions. Passive acoustic monitoring offers an alternative, particularly if acoustic cues are naturally produced and individually distinctive. Here we investigate the potential of using individually distinctive signature whistles in a MR framework and evaluate different components of study design.

Knowledge of the occurrence and distribution of cetaceans is particularly important for conservation and management, but is still limited within Namibian waters. We collated 3211 cetacean records from the Namibian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for the period 2008 to 2016 and applied the principle of minimum cross entropy (MinxEnt) to predict habitat suitability. MinxEnt is a generalised form of maximum entropy modelling that allows incorporation of additional information such as sampling bias.

A total of 250,786 Cape Cormorants, of which 16,038 were individuals on nests in 349 colonies, and 15,831 Cape Fur Seals were counted during a complete aerial photographic census of the island of Tigres and part of the adjacent coast in Angola in March 2017. Such a concentration of birds and seals and the large number of breeding Cape Cormorants highlights the need to protect Tigres and its rich surrounding waters. Keywords: aerial census, Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus, Baía dos Tigres, Cape cormorant, Cape fur seal, Phalacrocorax capensis.

African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are imperiled by poaching and habitat loss. Despite global attention to the plight of elephants, their population sizes and trends are uncertain or unknown over much of Africa. To conserve this iconic species, conservationists need timely, accurate data on elephant populations. Here, we report the results of the Great Elephant Census (GEC), the first continent-wide, standardized survey of African savannah elephants. We also provide the first quantitative model of elephant population trends across Africa.