A Series: From the Front Lines of Africa’s Elephant Slaughter
First posted on Huffington Post on January 28, 2013.
Kenya 1; Visiting the Sheldrick Trust Part One
Elephants orphaned by poaching. Photo by Carl Safina.
Today in the course of researching a new book on the lives of animals, I visited the famed elephant orphanage at the Sheldrick Trust. I got a privileged view.
There are three basic problems creating orphan elephants at an escalating rate: exploding human populations across Africa (as in other impoverished places) have eliminated elephants from many countries. Everywhere elephants still exist, humans are pushing elephants into tighter quarters. Human population growth is the main problem, and Kenya’s is growing rapidly. Relatedly, reserves and national parks are seldom large enough to contain elephant herds. Most herds cross in and out of protected boundaries. Outside, they run into new farms with irresistible crops, new settlements on traditional elephant migration routes, and angry, threatened villagers. Conflicts turn deadly for both elephants and humans. Third, increasing wealth in China has brought an insatiable demand for the elephants’ long incisor teeth that we call tusks. As you know, the substance they’re made of is called ivory.
Beautiful when carved, almost every piece of ivory has come from an elephant killed illegally. Prices have never been higher, and elephant poaching is now out of control. In many countries, corrupt officials are involved. In some, armies of rebel soldiers, or even armies of the regular government, are being sent across borders with modern military weapons to slaughter elephants to raise cash to fuel more fighting. Anti-poaching units are finding themselves outgunned. Poachers have hunted down and killed anti-poaching rangers. Rumor is that some poachers may now be using silencers and night-vision equipment. It’s a nightmare scenario from the worst parts of the human mind, turned to deadly violence for nature and humans.
If you can put that out of your mind for a minute, the Trust is a delightful place. Not only is the compassion deeply touching and the baby elephants wonderful. But by saving and eventually re-wilding elephant orphans, the Trust also bears global witness for the holocaust bearing down on wild creatures, wild places, and especially elephants.
About a hundred tourists, almost all white, begin lining up along a rope bordering a patch of open ground. At the appointed time, a keeper in a green coat walks out of the bush followed single-file by about a dozen young elephants. The smallest, just waist-high, wears a blanket. The largest, whose shoulder is just above my eye-level, is about three years old and weighs an easy half-ton.
Other keepers are now manning two-dozen two-liter milk bottles. The milk disappears in great suckling chugs. All gone in a few seconds.
Nursing orphan elephant at the David Sheldrick Trust. Photo by Carl Safina.
While this is happening, one of the keepers give a long spiel about who they are, how they got here, ivory, and the severe new escalation in price, driven by demand in China. Overheard: A gray-haired man says to his wife, “How would China like it if Africans started coming to China and shooting their pandas?”
It is indeed sad and disheartening the way these poachers are ripping themselves and the entire continent of their most valuable treasures with the sorry excuse of making money. I would like to make a reference to the gray-haired man’s comment from the article;“How would China like it if Africans started coming to China and shooting their pandas?” My issue is who are the people killing these elephants? Are they not the same Africans and Kenyans for that matter? So the question is: Who and what is the cause of this abominable act? Are they putting into place any measures to ensure the continues existence of these elephants? This is where I make another reference from Bodansky’s paper “What is International Environmental Law?” The poachers can make a factual argument that they have been hunting these animals for several years and they have not run into extinct. Moreover, this is how they also earn a living. But we can also make an argument based on values. For example: Elephants are sentient beings whose killing is wrong no matter the motive and so we should protect every individual elephant.
Something needs to be done about this matter and fast. The future of the entire global village depends on it.
We have little time to resolve this problem and to provide for the future of elephants and wild animals in general. Who is working with this problem from an economic viewpoint? Can benefits derived from elephant protection complete with money made from slaughter? If money flows to the local populations from maintaining elephants and their habitat we may make progress. Who are the poachers? How do local settlements aide or allow poaching? Can organizations focus efforts on providing payments to locals for numbers of healthy elephants and hectares of healthy habitat? Can former poachers become paid protectors? Do you know which organizations are making any progress?
Most wildlife advocacy organizations tell me they are lobbying African governments to take responsibility. We cannot wait for that and I have very little faith in the corrupt governments involved, who are benefitting from this slaughter personally in many cases. Human life itself holds little value in many of these areas. I believe that we need to build meaningful economic incentives to project elephants and their habit, shared with so many other animals.
Any suggestions?
Some of the best organizations in Kenya are: Save the Elephants, the David Sheldrick Trust, Big Life Foundation, and Amboseli Trust for Elephants.