Love, Life, and Elephants by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

Author:Dame Daphne Sheldrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

With the poaching threat of the 1950s having receded, the elephants now understood that Tsavo provided protection for them; their numbers multiplied and this had a massive impact on the Park’s vegetation. David worried that browsing species such as gerenuk, kudu, dikdiks and rhinos might be affected adversely and continued to press for an in-depth scientific study to try to unravel the effects of such changes. He was resolute in his wish to avoid the artificial slaughter of elephants, South African style. There, elephant numbers were being strictly regulated by the annual cull, which, although surgical in proficiency, was particularly cruel and unpalatable to those who understood the very human emotional side of elephants. We knew only too well that there, family units were targeted from helicopters using the immobilizing drug scholine, in order to avoid contamination of the meat that would render it unfit for consumption. Scholine collapsed the muscles, leaving the elephants fully conscious yet unable to move even an eyelid while they waited for the gunmen to move in on the ground and systematically finish them off with a shot through the brain. Sickening scenes were recorded on film of men jumping on huge inert bodies to get a better vantage point from which to end the life of others, paralysed elephants knowing exactly what was going on and having to watch helpless as their family members were butchered one by one. We were stunned at the distressing images of panic-stricken calves crying for help from adults incapable of movement. Calves that might be able to survive without milk were then captured for subsequent sale to circuses or zoos. The fully milk-dependent tiny calves were usually the last to be slaughtered, but at least they were spared a lifetime of suffering and bondage in far-off lands where animal welfare was still apparently a very alien concept.

Once the entire elephant family was either dead or subjugated, the merciless butchers then moved in to cut up the carcasses and remove all the meat to huge abattoirs for processing, after which it was either dried and sold as biltong, or canned for pet food and even for human consumption. And having completed the grisly annual slaughter, grieving elephant survivors were allowed a brief reprieve of just one year to mourn their lost loved ones before the helicopters were mobilized and the carnage began all over again. We had been told that just the beat of a helicopter sent every elephant into panic-stricken flight, running for their very life, knowing that this time it could be their turn. In the elephant world, word silently spreads over distance like wildfire through their mysterious means of infrasound communication, so even those far removed were getting the message.

David had an intimate knowledge of elephant intelligence and sensitivity, of the strength of their family ties, and their very real sense of death. He knew how deeply they mourned their loved ones and that their powers of memory far exceeded our own. Few people understood what David had learned during the anti-poaching campaign and from the close observation of our orphans.

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