I remember standing on south front street and watching the elephants parade past.
We see greed all around us. And we see desperate want. Combine the two and we have the diminishing of a proud species, the African elephant.
Loxodonta Africana! Whither will you go?
I remember when I was a small three-year old I went downtown and stood in front of my grandmother’s store and watched the circus parade go by. I have a picture in some dusty shoebox of me gawking at the elephants as they were paraded from the train station to the circus grounds. This was a long time ago and a very small town. A circus was a big deal. It was summer entertainment, and everyone would go. And we would be amazed.
The picture above is that of a younger me at the elephant house in Washington, DC. My mother and father were taking us to the zoo. In this picture, I do not look too amazed and seem to be distracted by a peanut that someone had dropped on the ground. And the elephant does not seem too interested in me. Elephant enclosures have changed over the decades. They are more spacious, and the elephants, though still captive, are better treated.
Even with the picture the memory becomes pale. Is it time to say goodbye?
I do not want to say goodbye. I want to know that the elephants are out there. I may feel sorry for the captives in the zoo, but are they the luckier ones of their species?
The elephants’ ivory tusks drive the greed. Their ivory is used to make decorative items sold to tourist and collectors around the world, sometimes illegally. The chain begins with the elephant poachers that are often trying to make a living to support their families. There is a lot of poverty and hunger in these parts of Africa. There are people in the chain between the poacher and the collector that are making plenty of money, but I doubt that the poachers are. And there are job-related safety issues. Poachers that are found out are at risk of being shot by park rangers. One group of poachers was recently found to have been eaten by lions.
But I despair for the L. Africana in the wild. In an article published on the National Geographic website, 87 elephants – EIGHTY-SEVEN! – were recently found murdered and butchered inside a safe-haven in Botswana.
There are estimated to be around 700,000 African elephants still in the wild. This sounds like a large number, but I fear that in my life-time the species will be lost to us. It will be lost because of greed and a desire to own a trinket made of ivory that is much more beautiful on the creature than it is on someone’s crowded shelf. There are good organizations trying to fight back against the rising tide of the ivory trade. But demand is not slacking; demand is increasing. The National Geographic article goes on to say that there are a rising number of wild and unfortunate interactions between the elephants and the people of the area. As the number of people looking for land encroach more and more into the areas once safe for and ruled by the elephants, wild interactions between people and elephants will increase and demand for protection of crops and homes and people will take precedent over preserving space for the species in the wild.
It’s a sad thing to think that something of such beauty and magnificence will be gone from the world. I have never seen an elephant in the wild. I wish I had seen them. I was thrilled to read stories of Africa, about the large unpopulated areas where these magnificence beasts and many others roamed free. But these areas are disappearing and the parks set up as protected areas are not able to ensure that the elephants will stay in the park, nor ensure that poachers will not enter the park to massacre the elephants as happened in Botswana. The National Geographic article states that in a seven-year period ending in 2014 the continent-wide population of wild elephants had dropped by 30%!
I will always cheer for the elephant and will try to help the organizations that are trying to protect the wild elephant population. But with numbers of elephants massacred being driven by a rising tide of greed for ivory and ivory dollars – I despair.
Too soon the elephant may become an old, faded memory in a dusty shoebox. I fear that all to soon I will have to say goodbye.
The National Geogrphic article may be found at http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/msn/87-elephants-killed-by-poachers-in-africa%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98last-safe-haven%e2%80%99/ar-BBMTkqF
The organization mentioned in the article and which found and counted the elephant carcasses is Elephants without Borders. Their website is http://elephantswithoutborders.org/