itors, the Maasai, conflict between the two is rare and triggered most often when
events like extreme drought stress both populations. In the Amboseli-Tsavo
Group Ranch Conservation area between 1993 and 2005, 18 people were killed
and the same number injured by elephants (Moss and Lee, 2011, p. 331). Over
nearly the same period of time (1997–2007), 91 elephants were speared, 57 of
which died.
Them and Us Chapter | 14 115
FIGURE 14.4 Expanded Addo Elephant National Park. (1) Original Addo elephant enclosure (approximately 220 km2 or 80 mile2); (2) inland expansion (approximately 1200 km2 or 430 mile2); and (3) coastal parkland and ocean including Stag and Bird Island (approximately 1400 km2 or 500 mile2). (See also Figure 1.2 in Chapter 1.)
TABLE 14.1 Annual numbers of human deaths caused by elephants in protected
areas, communal lands, and enterprises using tame elephants (e.g., elephant
theme parks and elephant-back safari operations) in South Africa
Protected
Communal
Enterprise Using
Year
Areas
Land
Tame Elephants
Total
2002
2
1
0
3
2003
3
2
0
5
2004
2
0
0
2
2005
4
0
1
5
2006
2
0
1
3
2007
0
1
0
1
Total number
13
4
2
19
Percent
60%
21%
11%
After Scholes and Mennell (2008, p. 222). Permission courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand Press and the authors Scholes and Mennell.
116 Elephant Sense and Sensibility
Despite the close contact and resulting conflict, when resources are shared
elephants have not aggressively attacked humans. In fact, as shown earlier, they
recognize and can discriminate between humans who pose a threat and those
who do not. Their response is to avoid rather than seek conflict. In the Amboseli
study, which through force of circumstances has had to deal with elephant–
people conflict, solutions have been found and the prospects for mutual survival
exist, albeit resting in the hands of humans.
The second possible hope that humans and elephants can coexist lies in the
evolutionary history of humans and elephants. For a far greater part of this his-
tory or about 99.99% of the time, humans and elephants have coexisted with
little or no conflict. In fact, humans probably feared elephants much more than
the other way around. Only for a fraction of their mutual history, no more than
one-hundredth of one percent of the time, were humans and elephants in mortal
combat. It may be just possible that with the smallest sign of tolerance exhibited
by humans for the well-being of elephants, it will be the elephants that meet us
more than halfway.
Both solutions, however, may fail in the face of growing inhumanity and
human greed. Unless a concerted international response is mounted within the
immediate future, there is a real danger that the poaching of elephants and rhi-
noceros, for their tusks and horns, will eradicate both species from the wild.
Poaching must be viewed by the world’s community in the identical light
as we would a crime against humanity. We must see the slaughter of elephants,
and other wildlife, with the same horror that we view ethnic cleansing. This
slaughter of animals when seen in proportion to the global numbers involved far
exceeds any assault humans have ever perpetrated upon their own kind.
To halt this Faustian tragedy, the international community, including those
nations implicated in the crime, needs to take action simultaneously on two
fronts: ban the sale of ivory and horn and vigorously and effectively suppress
poaching.
Both actions have challenged global conservation forces in the past.
Banning the sale of ivory has been effective; suppressing poaching much less
so. International action can severely curtail the sale of ivory. Stopping poaching
will require an advanced, well-equipped task force. Such a special force cannot
be deployed simultaneously in all regions where poaching is rife. Instead, it
should be deployed in a limited area where the chances of success are high, and,
more importantly, the message to all poachers and those who support them will
be the strongest. Once the suppression of poaching in one region has succeeded,
methodology, personnel, and equipment can be transferred to cover a second
selected region. Determined action of this kind would, in conjunction with the
enforcement of trade agreements, rapidly reduce the slaughter to sustainable
levels. If the account of elephants in this book is to have any meaning, then it
calls upon our species to act with determination on behalf of our sorely tried
brethren.
Them and Us Chapter | 14 117
Having done so, however, the battle will not have been won. Rather, the real
battle for mutual survival on this planet can then begin in earnest. This battle
will be to confront the combined demands of a growing global human popula-
tion and its inevitable drain upon the finite resources of the planet. Our inability
to limit contamination and pollution of the fluid systems of the earth, air, and
water is evident in almost every corner of the world. Careful studies in regions
that, until very recently, were thought to be immune or too remote to suffer any
serious degradation are now showing disturbing responses in vegetation and
species degeneration. Hutto (2014) has shown that mule deer, mountain goats,
and elk in remote regions of the high Rockies may all be in an irreversible
decline.
Africa, despite environmental limitations discussed earlier, is seen by global
and indigenous economists as the continent of the future. To hope that humans,
in this diverse ecological continent, will be persuaded by the costly lessons we
have learned to seek some equilibrium in which species other than ourselves
might survive or even prosper is perhaps to hope in vain. All that has been re-
counted in this book, however, denies capitulation. At some point with this and
many, many more efforts we, and elephants, as sentient beings, must prevail.
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