Elephants might be the most well-known and well-loved animal in African wildlife. But conservation (保护) of the African elephant faces special difficulties. While the elephant population is half of what it was 40 years ago, some areas of Africa have more elephants than populated areas can support. That's why AWF scientists are studying elephant behavior, protecting habitats and finding ways for humans to live peacefully with elephants in Africa.

    Years ago, over hunting and the ivory trade were the biggest threats to elephants survival. Luckily, ivory bans (禁令), hunting rules and protected areas protect elephants from these dangers today.

    The 21st century brings a different challenge to elephant conservation —land-use. Elephants walk across borders and outside parks and other protected areas. So they often destroy crops, causing conflicts (冲突) between local farmers and these big animals.

    Successful conservation strategies (策略) must allow elephants to walk freely in their natural habitats while reducing conflicts between elephants and local people.

    AWF researchers are searching for a way to give both elephants and people the space they need. The AWF is collecting information on elephant habitats and behavior. The information they gather will help to develop the widest possible space for elephants.

    The AWF is helping elephants by protecting their habitats. And they also work with local farmers to improve their life in order to encourage them to protect rather than destroy elephants.

Welcome to Adventureland!

    Everyone loves Adventureland! The parks and exhibitions were built for you to explore(探索), enjoy, and admire their wonders. Every visit will be an unforgettable experience. You will go away enriched, longing to come back. What are you going to do this time?

The Travel Pavilion

    Explore places you have never been to before, and experience different ways of life. Visit the Amazon jungle(丛林)village, the Turkish market, the Tai floating market, the Berber mountain house and others. Talk to the people there who will tell you about their lives, and things they make. You can try making a carpet, making nets, fishing…

The Future Tower

    This exhibition shows how progress will touch our lives. It allows us to look into the future and explore the cities of the next century and the way we'll be living then. Spend some time in our space station and climb into our simulator(模拟装置)for the Journey to Mars!

The Nature Park

    This is not really one park but several. In the Safari Park you can drive among African animals in one of our Range Cruisers: see lions, giraffes, elephants in the wild. Move on to theOcean Park to watch the dolphins and whales. And then there is still the Aviary to see…

The Pyramid

    This is the center of Adventureland. Run out of film, need some postcards and stamps?

    For all these things and many more, visit our underground shopping center. Come here for information and ideas too.

    It is quite reasonable to blame traffic jams, the cost of gas and the great speed of modern life, but manners on the road are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest man would become fierce tigers behind the wheel. It is all right to have a tiger in a cage, but to have one in the driver's seat is another matter.

    Road politeness is not only good manners, but good sense. It takes the most cool-hearted drivers great patience to give up the desire to beat back when forced to face rude driving. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards reducing the possibility of quarrelling and fighting. A friendly nod or a wave, or thanks in answer to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of good will and becomes so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such behaviors of politeness are by no means enough. Many drivers nowadays don't even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

    However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. Typical example is the driver who waves to a child crossing the street at a wrong place into the path of oncoming cars that may not be able to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they want to.

    An experienced driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if drivers learnt to correctly join in traffic stream without causing total jams that give rise to unpleasant feelings. Unfortunately, modern drivers can't even learn to drive, let alone master the roadmanship(驾车技能). Years ago, experts warned us that the fast increase of the car ownership would demand more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time that all of us took this message to heart.

    20 years ago, a couple of ecologists, Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, convinced Del Oro, a large orange juice producer, to donate part of their forestland to a national park in exchange for the right to dump (倾倒) massive amounts of orange peels on a 3-hectare piece of land within the national park, at no cost. Dealing with tons of waste peels usually involved burning them or paying to have them dumped at a landfill, so the proposal was very attractive.

    A year after the contract was signed, Del Oro dumped around 12,000 tons of sticky orange waste in the land. However, another juice company and rival of Del Oro challenged the deal in court, arguing that their competitor was “polluting the national park”. They ended up winning, and the deal between Del Oro and the national park fell through. The 3-hectare piece of land virtually covered with fruit waste was completely forgotten.

    Then, in 2013, Timothy Treuer, a scientist at Princeton University visited that piece of land 15 years earlier. What he found shocked him. “It was completely overgrown with trees and vines,” Timothy Treuer recently said, “the difference between fertilized and unfertilized areas was visually surprised us a lot! We needed to come up with some really good standards to evaluate exactly what was happening there.”

    To confirm that the fruit waste was responsible for the revival of plant life, Treuer and his team spent months picking up samples, analyzing and comparing them. They found “dramatic differences between the areas covered in orange peels and those that were not. The area fertilized by orange waste had richer soil, greater tree-species richness and greater forest coverage. In a sense, it's not just a win-win between the company and the local park—it's a win for everyone.”

    The effect the orange peels had on the land is probably not that surprising to people familiar with composting (堆肥), but what is shocking is that a judge actually called this particular example polluting the national park and stopped it from going forward. Now that Timothy Treuer's study has received worldwide attention, this type of polluting is being seriously considered as a way of bringing tropical forests back to life.

    I can proudly say that last year I broke the record for the oldest person in the world to ride a roller-coaster. I'm 105, but I feel younger. Even the doctor agrees I'm in good condition. I'm a bit deaf and my legs feel weak, but they are the only issue.

    I rode the Twistosaurus at Flamingo Land, which spins you round quite fast. I didn't choose to go on that. I'd have preferred a really fast one that went upside down. But I was told I couldn't ride something like that, because my blood pressure could drop and I might have some danger.

    I wasn't nervous — I don't get frightened of anything. I was securely fastened, so I knew I wouldn't fall out. The roller-coaster ride went on for three or four minutes, and it couldn't be a better experience. And I raised a lot of money for the Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland Air Ambulance fund, which was fantastic.

    People were saying I'd got a place in the Guinness World Records. Later, someone came to present me with the certificate. I had it on the wall in my living room, with another one that got a year earlier.

    My record-breaking ways really began a couple of years ago, with the ice-bucket challenge. It turned out that I was probably the oldest person in the world to do it, and the video was very popular. After that, I started to think about what else I could do to raise money for different charities.

    I'm not sure if anyone admires all the fun I'm having. They just say I'm daft and that's about it. But I've had many good days and many exciting times. I've had a really good life. I don't think I've wasted any of it.

    The largest-ever study of the link between city walkability and high blood pressure has been considered as evidence of the "invisible value of urban design" in improving long-term health outcomes, say researchers. The study of around 430,000 people aged between 38 and 73 and living in 22 UK cities found significant connections between the increased walkability of a neighborhood and reduced risk of high blood pressure among its residents (居民).

    The results remained the same even after lifestyles and physical environment were changed, though the protective effects were particularly pronounced among participants aged between 50 and 60, women, and those living in heavily populated areas and poor neighborhoods.

    The paper was published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health. With high blood pressure a major risk factor for chronic (慢性的) and particularly heart diseases, researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University said the findings showed the need to take notice of the health-influencing factor in urban design.

    "We are spending billions of pounds in preventing and curing heart diseases — if we are able to invest in creating healthy cities through small changes in the design of our neighborhoods to make them more activity-friendly and walkable, then probably, we will have significant savings in future healthcare expenses."

    Poorly designed spaces generally reduced walking and physical activity, promoting the lifestyles of long time sitting down and not moving, and were harmful to social communication, and as such related to poorer mental and physical health.

    Because walkability was “based on the potential (潜在的) design of the city", said Dr. Chinmoy Sarkar, cities could be adapted or designed to encourage it. “Such investments in healthy design are likely to bring in long-term gains as they are lasting and common."