The Last Elephants, compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell, Hardie Grant Books, 2019.
The photographs are again from Tanzania.
Before returning to the book, some more about the extraordinary, diminutive Lek Chailert and her Elephant Nature Park in Northern Thailand as can be seen in the video below.
š Sanctuary – Elephant Nature Park (2022) | Documentary
She knows elephants and they know her. But it’s more than that. I was again struck by how calm the rescue elephants mostly are as they are transported on lorries or accompanied on foot by staff and volunteers, however angry and fearful they maybe at first. Can they smell freedom ahead? I believe they can certainly sense it and profoundly read and understand the people who are helping them and their intentions.
When Lek is with the elephants at the park they constantly nudge her towards them with their trunks, bringing her in so that she is safe between their front legs and underneath them. She is asked if she ever feels afraid. She does not. It is very simple. She loves them and they know it and they love her. It is love. Pure and simple. And unconditional. Complete trust through mutual respect. She feels more safe with the giants than she does walking along a street. “I never say that I am the the elephant expert. I never say that I am the elephant whisperer.” To paraphrase: “When elephants know that we love them there is no need. We just have to open our hearts.”
She forgets her ego, abandons anthropocentric thinking, all she does is be kind and … love them.
Exploiting elephants, breaking their spirits (for logging, tourist entertainment and rides) inevitably involves terrible cruelty. But at the park we see an elephant who has stood on a landmine calmly offering up her foot for what must be painful treatment. It is obvious that she knows what is happening and to what end.
Elephants who need it are given round the clock treatment. A vet will sleep beside them if necessary.
Their lives at the sanctuary will be peaceful, beautiful, they have no worries and are free (although not completely wild, it is too late for many of them for that) and they will never again be alone. They can, in some cases almost for the very first time, be elephants.
There are thousands of other animals at the park, including many cats and dogs.
Fortunately, as well as having a beautiful heart and soul, Lek is astute and resolute in her fundraising efforts.
This video, which is very hard to watch in parts, is from the Sheldrick Trust There is a very happy ending.
Ziwa’s journey | Sheldrick Trust
Chapter 13, ‘Ensuring elephant survival through community benefit’, is by Romy Chevallier and Ross Harvey. They emphasise the importance of involving communities, of buffer zones and elephant pathways. Also that there needs to be awareness that it is not just abut money from tourism but the inherent value of elephants. And that benefits must go directly to the communities and that transparency and communication are essential.
Chapter 14, ‘Funding elephant conservation’, advises that organisations should be very careful about where their funding comes from. Nature should be protected for its own sake, not just for ours. There are ‘conservation refugees’ who were often previously living in harmony with wildlife and the enviromment. In India, for example, the WWF launched Operation Tiger in 1972 and in 2010 declared a Year of the Tiger with massive attendant publicity. “It failed to mention that between those dates it had virtually forced the Indian government to evict thousands of Adivasi forest dwellers who worshipped tigers and had always protected them from harm.”
The neoliberalist concept of ‘sustainable use’ is a terrible one and corporate donations are fraught with dangers. The WWF, which does not come well out of this book, has partnered with Coca-Cola and HSBC. The Wildlife Conservation Society with Chevron, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs and Total. There are other similar or worse examples. This taints the very environmental groups who accept the dirty money. “They have started taking millions of dollars in donations from very big, polluting corporations and putting [the companies’] staff on their boards. They they started promoting [these] companies’ agendas, often by hurting not only the environment, but ethnic and poor human communities.”
The WWF, again, gives seals of approval and sustainability to, amongst others, the palm oil industry in Borneo, salmon farms in Chile and “to companies that have turned the fertile Argentine pampas into a toxic GMO soy desert.”
Their aims should not be about monetising wildlife and the concept of species banking – do what you want as long as put money into saving a species elsewhere – seems awfully similar to our government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill now. Neither, of course, in any way work.
Before the next chapter there’s another quote from Wangari MaathaÄ©: There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness … that time is now.”
Chapter 15 is by Carina Bruwer, ‘Poaching networks of East Africa’. Wildlife trafficking is very, very lucrative, the fourth most lucrative for the transnational organised crime syndicates who run it, “topped only by narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking.” Sadly but unsurprisingly, bribery and corruption are a huge part of the problem.
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