The noble AFRICAN ELEPHANT has not been treated well in Africa. They were not domesticated and trained and worshipped as in Asia. The Africans did not have much to supplement their diet with protein. So, they used the elephant for meat. The African Elephant was seen as meat to be hunted and killed. Elephants lived among a human population that was often sparse. The elephants existence was unrestricted and not regulated by humans. Humans did not try to make many changes to the environment. Elephants stayed away from the human population, rarely moved about the humans' croplands and were not considered competition with livestock.

The African people, who had seen the elephant, did respect their strength, wisdom, and benevolence and power, but did not attempt to have a close bond with the elephants. In the terrain in which elephants lived in Africa, elephants could not be used very often in epic battles or as working animals as they were used in Asia. The African Elephants are more difficult to train than the Asian Elephant. They are trainable, however, and have been used in zoos and in battles.

This appalls me to my soul. The MAJOR CAUSE of the lost of more than half of the elephant population in Africa is the massacre of elephants for the ivory trade. Between 1979 and 1989, the elephant population in Africa fell from 1.34 million to 625,000. In this ten year span, East Africa lost more than 52% of its elephant population. Kenya went from having about 130,000 to less than 17,000.
Mature males were targeted more often due to the length of their tusks. Ivory trade has been suspended in most countries (legally), but is still carried on illegally. The residents in the villages in the African countries with elephant population, often see the elephant as a pest--ravaging their crops and and taking up valuable land that could be used for crops or habitation. Government officials, the military and the police are often corrupt and enable the export of ivory by means of false documents and looking the other way. Even if ivory loses its value, will the African people let the elephant population grow? I would hope so.

It gets worse. The Indian cheetah, golden eagle, pink-headed duck are gone forever. India lost close to 107 tuskers to ivory poachers in 1997; just under one in three days! Over 600 kilos of ivory carvings were seized from traders in Jaipur in August 1998. Bangalore saw two major ivory seizures in recent months. India is left with fewer than 1,500 tuskers of breeding age.

In 1998, at least 14 Asiatic lions have been poached. Seizures of tiger skins during 1996 rose to 18 by August and five tigers have been found dead, two of them poisoned and one killed with an axe. Forest Dept. figures show that 14 tuskers, 9 tigers, 11 crocodiles and 15 deer are said to have been killed in Orissa in the year 1997.

"Every civilising step in history has been ridiculed as "sentimental", "impractical", "womanish", etc., by those whose fun profit or convenience was at stake. We are all fortunate that contempt has never been able to squelch the more admirable human qualities...sensitivity to injustice, sympathy with suffering, protectiveness toward the helpless, recognition of wider and wider kinships. These feelings have been behind every compassionate crusade the world has ever seen. Mankind continues to become gradually less cruel because a few people in every generation keep saying: 'This just isn't right. It hurts me to see it'."~~Joan Gilbert

What gives man the right to decide which animals survive, and which become extinct?
We are such an arrogant species!

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