Elephant Crisis: The Largest Land Mammal Needs our Help

by Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick

Elephants have captured the imagination of individuals across the world. Majestic beings, they have fascinated even those who may never have enjoyed close contact with them.

It’s this empathy that has led thousands of people worldwide today to join the International March for Elephants organized by iworry, a campaign by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, to publicize the warning that the future survival of elephants is at serious risk.

Some may wonder why elephants matter. I have been privileged to live amongst them and have nurtured a lifelong passion to protect them for over 55 years. My team and I have hand-reared more than 160 orphaned elephants to date, some from the day they were born. It’s a long-term commitment, and I have known them intimately throughout infancy and childhood into their teenage years and beyond.

Scientific studies of elephants have now led to the acceptance of abilities that we have observed on a daily basis for many years. Elephants share the same emotions as humans, with a strong sense of family and the same sense of death. Like us, they suffer with the loss of loved ones. Each has an individual personality just like us. They can be mischievous, playful, feel offended or foolish.

In many ways they are better than us, and they have attributes that we humans lack, such as the ability to communicate over distance using low range sound hidden to human ears. They have telepathic capabilities, as well as being sensitive to seismic sound through their feet. Yet for all the worldly reverence for elephants, they are today being hunted and killed at a catastrophic rate for something as simple as a tooth.

The phenomenon of poaching elephants for their tusks is not new. It was only through awareness campaigns and international pressure that a ban on the international sale of ivory was enacted in 1989. This ban provided a brief relief for elephants by stopping an increasing trade that in some regions caused the loss of up to 80 percent of herds.

However, poaching has escalated in already devastated populations recently. The interest in ivory stimulated demand, and the result is that elephants are now being poached at the highest rate since records of their numbers began. Current estimates put the figure at 36,000 elephants killed annually, which means one elephant dying every 15 minutes.

To date we’ve arrested 1,406 poachers, and our veterinary teams have successfully treated over 500 wounded elephants. As long as any trade in ivory remains—legal or illegal, global or domestic—elephants will continue to be cruelly killed for their tusks.

Internet: <www.nationalgeographic.com> (adapted).