Elephants are on their way to extinction
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The long and short of it is that, in spite of a well-meaning and fairly organized effort over the past few decades, the world's African elephants in the wild are being systematically exterminated.
The cause is a combination of growing wealth and a taste for ivory in China coupled with fecklessness and greed on the part of Africans who host and are supposed to protect the elephants.
The bottom line for Americans is that, given the likelihood that efforts to save the elephants will not succeed, the best thing to do is go to Africa and visit them while they are still around.
The most recent layout of the situation is contained in a masterful piece of journalism executed by Vanity Fair editor Alex Shoumatoff -- after a six-week, nine-country investigation -- entitled "Agony and Ivory" in the August issue of the magazine.
I should say, for purposes of "truth in advertising," that I have had a soft spot for elephants for 50 years. I first ran into them outside of a zoo as a teacher in Nigeria in 1961. My students turned up one morning with the alarming news that a rogue elephant was running loose in a nearby village, destroying houses and fields, and that some brave hunters were going to have to kill it.
Since then I have seen elephants in the wild in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and especially in the Central African Republic, which is featured at some length in the Vanity Fair piece. I've also ridden a tame one in Thailand.
Elephants are very endearing, although one should not get too close to them and definitely should not anger one. They run in extended families -- like modern Americans -- and can live past 65. They demonstrate a whole range of emotions, including sorrow, and those who study them are still trying to figure the many ways they communicate.
First Published July 27, 2011 12:00 am
