Elephants

Elephant, Amboseli National Park, Kenya

You can’t live in Kenya without being outraged and shaken by the senseless massacre of elephants for ivory. Well, maybe you can. But I can’t. And I’m not alone.

Measures to ban the use and sale of ivory have been in effect for decades. But the illegal trade continues, bolstered by a growing demand in China mostly, and other parts of Asia. The demand is driven by conspicuous consumption, largely among a new upper class eager to show off its ability to buy something rare, precious, and unauthorized.  Poaching of elephants is on the rise again, after a drop in the 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, 25,000 African elephants were killed by poachers. It’s a staggering number.

Baby elephants are dependent on their mother's milk for 2 years

This is particularly heartbreaking when you consider how long it takes to make or replace an elephant. The gestation period is nearly two years. Baby elephants are dependent on their mother’s milk for another two years, and not totally ready to fend for themselves for several years more.

Elephants are incredible animals. They communicate with each other through sound waves we humans can’t hear. Some say they have telepathic sense, too. And they do have long memories, able to recognize a former friend or relative after an absence of many years. They clearly experience joys and trauma. They will greet each other by wrapping their trunks together and huddling close. And despite their enormous size, they walk quietly on padded feet, with a surprisingly graceful gait.

Elephants in the morning mist, Lumo Community Conservancy

Just outside of Nairobi, in the boundaries of the Nairobi National Park, is the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. This remarkable place rescues baby elephants, some of them merely weeks old, and most of them orphaned due to poaching. The orphans show up traumatized, sick, and weak. About half of them cannot be saved and die in spite of heroic attempts and care on the part of the orphanage staff. 

The orphanage spends huge amounts of money and effort to care for the baby elephants, along with a handful of orphaned rhinos and other animals. The keepers actually live with the elephants to form a trusting bond, essential for their survival and ability to thrive. The elephants also form close ties with each other, naturally falling into matriarchal units, led by the older female orphans.

Elephant orphans come running for their mid-day meal, David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage

Each day, for one hour, the orphanage opens its doors to the public, and you can watch one of the several daily feedings. The baby elephants show up in two groups. The littlest ones first, followed by the slightly older ones. In both cases, they emerge from the brush running in anticipation of their giant baby bottles of milk (a special formula that took years to perfect), followed by a snack of leafy branches, and finished off with a good dust or mud bath.

It’s incredibly cute.

You can adopt an elephant for yourself or as a gift (I highly recommend it!) and support the orphanage in other ways. There’s more info here: http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

You can adopt a baby elephant

Saving an elephant is a big undertaking. When the babies reach the age of two years and can be weaned from milk, they are transferred to a center in Tsavo National Park, where they slowly adapt to life in the wild, including mingling with the wild herds that live in or migrate through the area. Eventually, they join in with a wild herd or form their own family group. Even so, most of them return for visits with their former keepers and to meet the new orphans, showing off their own offspring and groups.

Left to their own devices, elephants can live for 70 or 80 years. But at current rates of poaching, the long-term survival of any African elephants in the wild is seriously threatened.

Tens of thousands of years ago, we humans helped wipe out the early relatives of today’s elephants: mastodons and mammoths. Sporting huge tusks and long fur, they cohabitated with early man, roaming across North and Central America, Asia, and Europe. 

Wooly mammoth cave painting, dated about 13,000 years ago, Rouffignac Cave, France

But a warming climate combined with overhunting on the part of humans, thanks to advances in stone tool technology and hunting techniques, led to their extinction.

Today, we are on the brink of doing it again.

Compared to the 1.3 million African elephants living in the wild 25 years ago, there are about 470,000 left today. If current rates of poaching continue, we can expect the whole population of African elephants living in the wild to be wiped out by 2025.

That’s only a dozen years from now.

Elephant tracks in the mud, a vanishing sight?