White Man's Game by Stephanie Hanes

Author:Stephanie Hanes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

9

Elephant on the Run

Something in the way that Carlos stormed across the dusty driveway made him appear even more agitated than usual. He gave a curt salute to a ranger walking toward the camp’s main gate, and flicked some brushfire soot from where it had settled on his sleeve. He strode to the boma, that thatched-roof café and park staff meeting place, and sat down hard in one of the green plastic chairs, tossing his walkie-talkie onto the table.

I was sitting a few yards away, drinking the camp’s sticky coffee as ants formed their conga line across the table to the sugar bowl. I exchanged glances with Jonathan Retzlaff, one of the park’s guides, who was sitting nearby. Carlos was the warden now, and he always seemed to be managing a crisis. His ragtag army of rangers was in constant battle with an ever-shifting combination of poachers, potholes, wildfires, baboons, politicians, and river-poisoning gold miners.

“It’s the elies,” Jonathan explained in a low voice. Jonathan was a young Zimbabwean whose family’s farm had been taken over by Mugabe cronies a few years back. He talked softly, and watched more than he talked.

“The elies?” I asked.

“The big bulls we got from Kruger. They’re gone.” He lit another cigarette.

“Gone?” I exclaimed, incredulous.

He gave a short laugh, took another drag, and said nothing.

I glanced toward Carlos again.

The elephants had arrived just a few weeks earlier. There were two old males and four juveniles, all from South Africa’s Kruger Park, all with the large tusks that attract tourists and photographers and ivory hunters. The park staff was particularly excited about the two old bulls. These were the elephants most likely to mate, which meant they might introduce their genes for attractive tusks into the resident Gorongosa herd. For a hundred years in Gorongosa, hunters had picked off the elephants with the big tusks, so a sort of accelerated evolution by poaching had taken place: the local elephants were almost entirely tuskless, a genetic condition that occurs in only about 3 percent of natural, unstressed elephant populations.

The old bulls might also calm the skittish locals, staff members had said. Many of Gorongosa’s elephants, having survived brutal war and intense poaching, were fearful or aggressive around humans. This was understandable, but not particularly helpful for guides hosting safari tourists—especially given that the older Gorongosa elephants were now passing their wary values down to their young. The park staff had hoped the bulls from Kruger, accustomed to shutter-snapping visitors, would be a good influence.

Greg had made a point to be at the park to watch the bulls’ grand entrance, and his public relations staff had made sure to let journalists know about the animals’ arrival. So there was a crowd looking on as the transport trucks rumbled into the park at dawn, and the park scientists sedated the bulls and sealed gigantic radio collars around their necks. The park staff wanted to be sure to keep track of these important animals. Every weekday, GPS data would be transmitted to an environmental data company, which would then e-mail the bulls’ coordinates to Carlos.

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