NEWSFLASH NEWS AGENCY 3 January 10:30 am

Good morning, here is your Eco Minute:

# Rangers were recently surprised to find a herd of 13 elephants outside Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park’s main gate, waiting patiently to be allowed entry. A spokesperson of the Peace Parks Foundation says the rangers opened the gate and watched as the family herd lumbered calmly past to the banks of the Massingir Dam. The transfrontier park borders the iconic Kruger National Park. The incident stands in sharp contrast to 20 years ago, when most of the remaining elephants in the region crossed the border into the adjoining Kruger National Park.

# After 18 months of caring at Durban’s Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife, a Southern African python was finally ready to be released back into the Karkloof Nature Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal. A spokesperson says it took more than a year to get the animal back up to weight from 12- to 20-kilogram The snake keenly slid to freedom after her box was opened and happily dived into a stream. Run by a small, yet experienced team of staff and volunteers, the centre assists over three-thousand injured and displaced animals every year.

# And finally, world-renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, known for his fossil-finding and conservation work in his native Kenya, has died at the age of 77. The sad news was announced by Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta. Leakey’s groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humanity evolved in Africa. He remained energetic into his seventies despite bouts of skin cancer, kidney and liver disease as well as losing both legs in an aeroplane crash in 1993. Leakey also emerged as a leading voice against the ivory trade when the slaughter of African elephants reached a crescendo in the late 1980s.

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