by Mark Shand
I will never forget those wonderful people. They saved our lives. One of them was a doctor who stitched up Tim’s head and did his best to patch us up. They told me to sleep. I couldn’t. I burst into tears and cried all night as I watched my beloved boat fighting for her life, illuminated by the headlights of the many vehicles lining the shore. Winds had now hit 80-85 knots (about a hundred miles an hour). Palm trees were uprooted and crashed against the yacht club. The waves were up to twelve meters. The boat had no chance. Early in the morning, I saw her rise up once more, topple backwards and snap in two like a matchstick. I was numb. My dream had ended. I had lost everything.
After several months sitting in total depression in Bali, I received a letter – one of my father’s very special letters – which read: ‘I think it’s about time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself, contemplating your navel under the bodhi tree, and got back home’. Shortly afterwards a friend introduced me to one of my heroes, the legendary war photographer Don McCullin. I’d always been in awe of and fascinated by Don. He seemed such a complex man and came across as incredibly depressed and very grumpy. I love grumpy people. But I also felt an enormous compassion, lying under his gloomy exterior. Don had given up covering wars. He had a row with the editor of the Sunday Times, a newspaper he had risked his life for so many years. He now wanted, as he put it, ‘To get rid of the rubbish in my mind and record the disappearing tribes of the world, before it’s too late.’ He asked me to accompany him to Indonesia, as I knew the area well.
We made many fantastic journeys, particularly to the Mentawai Islands, off the west coast of Sumatra where Don took stunning photographs of the Sakkudei people, who have now been wiped out. In 1986, joined by my friend Harry Fane, we set out on expedition to the remote Asmat area of South Irian Jaya – Indonesia’s largest island. It was here in the 1960s that Michael Rockefeller was supposed to have been eaten by cannibals. We went to find out.
In 1987, I proudly published my first book, Skulduggery, an account of that journey. It got one review in a free property magazine. It read something like:
‘This book should be called Carry-on up the Jungle – a farcical attempt at travel-writing.’
This was not encouraging. However, I was lucky enough to have the legendary Abner Stein as my agent and the late great Tony Colwell as my editor at Jonathan Cape. With their support and perhaps because my publishers needed to recoup their losses, they gave me another chance to write.
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I had long wanted to write a book about India, the country that fascinated me most. I felt my soul was in India. So in 1988, I set off and came face to rump with Tara.
During that journey, through Tara I got my first inkling of the dangers facing her wild Asian cousins. I remember that in rural Orissa I was approached by a local teacher who was convinced that Tara and I had been sent by the Gods to catch a rogue elephant which had decimated his village’s crops and already killed eleven people. This was but one of many similar situations that I would encounter, exposing the growing imbalance in India between rural man and the natural life of the elephants. Both are blameless and both are victims of greed, greed caused by a desire for timber and space, and the consequent massive deforestation. Elephants are creatures of habit and have for centuries followed the same migratory routes in search of food. When they arrive and find that their larder has been cut down, in desperation they turn to raiding the crops on which the villagers’ livelihoods depend.
Over one hundred years ago, the American naturalist Charles Frederick Holder had recognized the inevitable. He wrote, ‘The Asiatic elephant is said to be holding its own. But the rapid advance of the British in the East cannot fail to have a fatal effect and extermination is only a matter of time. They are the last of a powerful race worthy of earnest efforts of preservation. The question of their extinction rests with the rising generation’.
Unfortunately, the rising – or should I say exploding – generations (India’s population alone is over 1.2 billion) have failed to address this urgent problem. It was only on returning home from my journey with Tara that the full impact of the experience began to take effect. Elephants, like India herself, move slowly and subtly to educate humans, and Tara had been a clever and instructive teacher.
What had started as a whim soon turned into a passion. I came to realise that Asian elephants had once roamed in their millions from Syria to China, but that now they were reduced to pathetic little herds in equally reduced forest fragments. Today it is doubtful if as many as forty thousand elephants survive in the whole of Asia. Africa’s elephant population is over half a million.
Unlike the larger, mammoth-tusked African elephant, the Asian elephant does not suffer to the same extent from poaching because only certain males carry ivory. Ironically however, and I say this with no prejudice because I adore all elephants, the African elephant has benefited from a highly emotional public outrage at their bloody slaughter for ivory. Appeals to help fund this fight have been so lucrative, positive and widespread that the Asian elephant, like the proverbial poor relation, has remained in the background waiting patiently for some crumbs. It seemed to me that the world had forgotten there was another elephant.
So I became what is now socially fashionable in western capitals, a person with a cause. But – to borrow an Indian expression – ‘what to do?’ I had no qualifications or scientific knowledge and, as I was to find out, the closed and rather arrogant coven of Asian elephant experts and NGOs did not take a mad Englishman’s journey on an elephant across India seriously. They thought it was a publicity stunt. If I was to be taken seriously, I needed credentials. I needed to get out to Asia and really understand the problem. My old mahout, Bhim, had told me ‘Rajah-Sahib there is only one way to learn about Haathi – be with them.’
Fortunately my book, due to Tara, was beginning to make waves and I was soon approached by independent documentary film-makers to write and present films on the Asian elephant. The first was with the Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn. Others followed and I wrote another book on my experiences with elephants. But what was most important was that the Asian elephant was finally getting some exposure in the West, and I was getting real hands-on field experience.
In the early nineties, I was approached by Fauna and Flora International, founded in 1903 and the oldest and most prestigious conservation society in the world. I was made a vice-president alongside the legendary Sir David Attenborough and David Bellamy. Perhaps I was finally being taken seriously. Fauna and Flora International had started to support Asian elephant conservation, particularly in Sumatra, Indonesia. It was a real learning curve for me. I spent a lot of time in the field, studying conservation and seeing how a charity works. But for my purposes, Fauna and Flora was too diverse. I wanted to concentrate only on the survival of the Asian elephant. To my knowledge such a charity did not exist. So on 1st September 2002, under the patronage of the late Rajmata of Jaipur, Sir Evelyn De Rothschild and five friends with the same passion, Elephant Family was born.
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We began as a welfare organisation, concentrating on improving the life of captive elephants in Jaipur and Sumatra. But soon we realised that every elephant in captivity reflects a failure of conservation efforts. It is like sticking on a plaster. There are many welfare organisations doing great work, but Elephant Family’s mission is to save the wild Asian elephant from extinction, before it is too late. We had to look at the bigger picture.
And we had to move fast. Ninety percent of the Asian elephant population had been wiped out in the previous hundred years. Ninety-five percent of their forest homes had been destroyed to make way for plantations, farms, mines, roads, railways and villages. And the situation was getting worse each year. The boom in the economy and in the human population had been catastrophic for the region’s wild places. The last remaining elephants were forced into tiny pockets of forest where they were competing with their human neighbours for food, water and space.
When they don
’t have enough space and food, elephants can cause chaos. When stressed, disorientated elephants clash with poor subsistence farmers and villagers, causing deaths on both sides. In India alone, a person kills an elephant and an elephant kills a person every single day of the year. By corralling them into ever smaller areas, we have changed the psyche of this peaceful herbivore into that of a dangerous, paranoid animal that will seek revenge. Elephants are the only species that are intelligent and big enough to take on humankind. And they won’t go quietly.
Elephant Family is dedicated to ending this daily battle between people and elephants. We are saving vital stretches of forest while we can, and reuniting isolated groups of elephants by reconnecting pockets of forest with ‘elephant corridors’. These corridors of protected land act as elephant highways, joining up forest fragments and allowing all wildlife – including tigers and orangutans – to roam freely, to find new sources of food and, crucially, to breed successfully. We are giving elephants the space they need. And we are helping poor rural communities protect their livelihoods so that their families can live safely in the last remaining elephant habitats.
There are over eighty-eight identified elephant corridors in India alone. Four years ago, in partnership with the Wildlife Trust of India, we set out to save the most important corridor of all, linking Tirunelli and Begur Forest Reserves in Kerala, South India. It is a lifeline for 6,500 elephants, the largest population of elephants in Asia.
Just six kilometres long by a kilometre wide, the corridor was home to fifty-four human families in five settlements. Four of these settlements have been relocated to brand new safe homes where they are now able to grow crops without the fear of raiding and dangerous elephants. We are just in the process of relocating the last settlement. Already, there have been sightings of other wildlife including tigers, leopards and spotted deer using the corridor. This is another reason why it is so important to save the Asian elephant. It is the apex species. Elephants are the guardians of the forests as they need the maximum amount of space. If you save them, you save all the other species that share their habitat.
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To start a charity from scratch is not an easy task. It takes real graft and belief. One person who has stayed with me from the beginning of this roller-coaster ride, Ruth Powys, is now the Director of Elephant Family. She instilled into the young and inexperienced team a passion and commitment that has made Elephant Family the success it is today.
Funding is always a problem. I have spent most of the last ten years with a begging bowl. On reflection, I realised that my past life hadn’t been such a disaster. I had made so many friends, many of whom have supported me with the utmost generosity. But you can’t just rely on major donors again and again. Donor fatigue sets in. The charity sector is highly competitive. You have to think out of the box and find other ways to raise funds and awareness. And you have to make it fun!
Initially, we took the traditional route by holding a grand dinner and auction called the ‘Elephant Durbar’. Its success was partly due to the fact that the event was held in a beautiful private garden in Richmond. In addition, in 2006 my sister Camilla married The Prince of Wales. Overnight, the demented young brother, the black sheep of the family, became a little more respectable, perhaps. Both have been long and loyal supporters of Elephant Family and kindly attended the event. In The Prince of Wales, I am lucky to have as a brother-in-law a truly brilliant ally, a legend who has contributed massively himself to conservation and the environment. But those traditional ways of raising funds are no longer sufficient.
Apart from her extraordinary work ethic and her refusal to fail, Ruth Powys possesses that rare ability to think out of the box. In 2005, we got involved with the fashion photographer, Bruce Weber, an avid elephant nut. He created a group of life-size metal elephant frames and dressed them in Haute Couture fashion for a shoot for W Magazine. The elephant frames were built by an eccentric and brilliant topiary artist from the States, Topiary Joe.
We never looked back. Elephant Family began to hit the headlines starting with ‘Elephants in the Park’ – a herd of ten beautiful life-size willow elephants covered by elephant blankets designed by top fashion designers. It was also the year that ‘Date an Elephant’ was launched. It’s a charming and much more personal adaptation of ‘Adopt an Elephant’. On Valentine’s Day, elephant daters receive personalised photographs and love poems from special elephants with different characters, chosen from our welfare projects, written painstakingly and beautifully by one of our team.
In 2008, the Survival Tour rocked off – thirteen life-size topiary elephants created by Topiary Joe, Ruth’s twin sister, Mary, and her husband, Derek, in a barn near their home in Clonakilty, Ireland. They travelled right across the UK and Ireland and were showcased in spectacular locations. Audiences from these two exhibitions had now reached thirteen million and significant funds had been raised from the sale of the elephants and the blankets. Most importantly Elephant Family was growing a reputation as the charity that did things differently.
In 2010, we staged the largest outdoor art exhibition to date, in London. Two hundred and sixty elephant sculptures were placed across London, all painted by top artists, fashion designers and architects. It caused a sensation. At the auctions, conducted by Sotheby’s and online, we raised over £4 million from the sale of the elephants. The top price – £155,000 – was paid for a fantastic elephant creation by the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano.
In 2011, Ruth dreamed up ‘Jungle City’. One of the objectives of this new exhibition was to unite the conservation movement in Asia. We partnered with six other charities working in Asia with different species. A hundred and thirty elephant, tiger, orangutan, crocodile and hornbill sculptures, again painted by fantastic artists, were hidden across Edinburgh and raised over a million pounds.
This year we changed shape. Elephant Family, in partnership with Action for Children put on the largest egg hunt ever, sponsored by the jeweller, Fabergé. For forty days and forty nights, two hundred and ten giant eggs designed and created by top artists were hidden across London. We broke two Guinness World Records - for the most expensive chocolate egg ever sold, and for the most entrants in an egg hunt competition. We raised over one million pounds for the different charities and artists such as Zaha Hadid, The Chapman Brothers, Marc Quinn, Sir Peter Blake, Bruce Oldfield, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and Nicky Haslam headlined the event with others.
Elephant Family has grown. We now have thirteen projects in four countries: India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Campaigning is a high priority. If you can’t encourage conservation, or put pressure on the governments and major companies, you’re hitting a brick wall. I am deeply proud to have played a role in this wonderful charity – probably more proud than of anything else I have done in my life. We are now the UK’s biggest funder of the endangered Asian elephant. To date we have raised £9.7 million for their conservation. Not bad for a charity that celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
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It’s fitting to end with Tara, who is the true founder of Elephant Family. Over the years, I’ve visited her regularly at her home in Kipling Camp, Madhya Pradesh, where she lives like a pampered princess. She wakes up, eats, sleeps, swims, has a massage, eats and then goes back to bed – day in, day out. I would swap her life for mine any time. If I ever feel the need for motivation, all it takes is a few days with her to relieve the stress and fill me with hope again.
People ask me all the time how old she is. I know it is impolite to ask a lady her age. However, I will disclose that we celebrated my sixtieth and her fiftieth birthday last year when she consumed a cake which took four strong men to carry. I hope she does not read this. She, like most vain women, has always lied about her age.
Though she is getting older, she is just as beautiful. The tops of her ears are curling over, and she has lost two sets of molars. But this has not affected her appetite. And she is in better shape than me, with my two replaced hips.
She doesn’t frolic so much now in her private swimming pool in the local river. She sits quietly, her eyes (fringed by lashes long enough to suggest that they are false) closed contentedly. Occasionally, she will flick her trunk out of the water, spraying us with cooling water as I rest my head against her back – two old friends, enjoying the evening of their lives together.
I remember when I had finished my journey, the old elephant hands of Assam told me that I could now retire. ‘You have performed Haathi Dhun,’ they said. ‘You have given life back to an elephant. From now on your life will be gilded in gold.’ How could I think of retiring? I did not save her. She saved me.
Mark Shand
London 2012
To find out more about Elephant Family’s work, or to donate to the charity, please visit www.elephantfamily.org
Bibliography
NOTE: I have referred to some of these books in the text and they have all provided helpful background information.
Harry Abbot, Reminiscences of Sonepore, Star Press, Calcutta, 1896.
Salim Ali, The Book of Indian Birds, Bombay Natural Society, Bombay, 1979.
George Franklin Atkinson, Curry and Rice: The Ingredients of Social Life at ‘Our Station’ in India, Day and Day, London.
R. D. Banerji, History of Orissa, vols 1 & 2, Calcutta, 1931.
A. L. Basham, The Wonder that was India, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1954.
Hilaire Belloc, The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, Duckworth, London, 1938.
J. Moray Brown, Shikar Sketches with Notes on Indian Field Sports, Hurst & Blackett, London, 1887.
Richard Carrington, Elephants, Chatto & Windus, London, 1958.
Jane Dunbar (ed.), Tigers, Durbars and Kings: Fanny Eden’s Indian Journals 1837–1838, John Murray, London, 1988.