Poaching

Poaching

   To be clear, this has nothing to do with eggs.  Rather, I had been reading the recent statistics of certain animal populations and how they still continue to plummet, primarily due to poachers.  For the rebel armies and drug-fueled soldiers (for poaching has moved far beyond the everyday villager trying to make a bit more money to feed his family), an elephant --one elephant-- can bring in as much as $600,000 with its tusks.  Admittedly, that's a lot of money.  But standing there facing such a magnificent creature, would you feel comfortable pulling the trigger and bringing it down?

   Frankly, I just don't get it.  The mindset of poachers of all types is something so foreign to me, for even in India, the tiger population continues to be poached, the numbers now down to less than 1500.  And in Africa, the BBC reported that recent studies show that 7% of the elephant population is being killed each year, surpassing the birth rate.  And one has to ask, for what?  In the case of the elephants, the ivory tusks are all that is taken with the rest of the animal left to rot.  Often, the elephants are poisoned with entire wells or watering holes contaminated;  the carrion feeders thus go on to be poisoned themselves and the water is left unusable.  The poachers simply move on, their keratin (the same material that makes up our fingernails) rhino horns in their bags (the rest of the animals is left to rot as well), the elephant tusks in their jeeps and the money soon to come.

   Here's another way to imagine this.  A strange plague or force arrives, one which we are unable to see or outwit or destroy, say a vapor-like fog.  When this being comes, it wipes out 80 or 90% of our population, worldwide.  Millions die daily and worldwide -- Rome, Tokyo, San Francisco, Lima, no city is safe.  Human bodies are everywhere, all left to rot...and all that is missing in each body are the teeth.  There are no barriers in the killings, rich and poor, black and white, young and old.  Billions of people suddenly lay dead in the streets, all wondering why?  What is it with this strange alien species that just wants the teeth?  And then we find out that these beings do nothing more than decorate and carve the teeth into trinkets, ornaments to show other beings, icons to display proudly.  The human population continues to plummet, millions dying each day for this species has no boundaries and no concern...just get more teeth, a lucrative trade, something always in demand.  Men, women, children, babies.  It doesn't matter.  Just get the teeth.  The rest of the body is useless and of no value.  Only the teeth.

   This isn't science fiction (well, it's my way of trying to understand what the elephants might be pondering);  the elephants are sentient beings and in many way, more social than humans.  Family ties are strong, memories even stronger.  Pacifists, quick learners, vegetarians, elephants mourn their losses for years, moving the bones of their dead into areas they can revisit;  sadly, the poachers know this and also return, ready to take the rest of the herd.  They also know that if the matriarch is smart enough to avoid them, they simply have to kill the babies and juveniles to draw her out.  Rangers find entire herds gunned down, all for the taking of a few elephants with developed tusks.

   But wait...before you tune out and say "don't tell me, I don't want to know," there IS hope.  Kathryn Bigelow (Academy Award winner) joined other to make a short 3-minute film that is now viral.  Last Days depicts the startling facts...one elephant killed every 15 minutes;  elephants might be extinct in 11 years (some of these statistics vary according to the areas and studies completed or ongoing).   And there are many groups and people working diligently and dedicated to stopping this terrorist form of funding...trained rangers patrol vast areas, funding to provide them the necessary fuel and counter-weapons is steadily increasing, and public education is growing (unfortunately, Russia's weapon trade jumped over 20%, with South Korea and France right behind at 10%...the U.S. trade surprisingly dropped nearly 5% and Italy's fell by 16%).

   International basketball star, Yao Ming, ran a special on elephants (it ran on Animal Planet but can still be seen at their site);  titled Saving Africa's Giants With Yao Ming, it main message is, "When the buying stops, the killing stops" (China, which is where Yao Ming is from, is among the major buyers of illegal ivory with the Phillipines running a close second).

   In addition, famous authors such as Jodi Picoult, are writing passionately about the problem.  Traveling to Botswana (the elephants there are thriving;  Central Africa is suffering the most devastation), the author became spellbound at how elephants mourn their losses.  Interviewed by Allen Pierleoni of the Sacramento Bee, she says, “I did a lot of work on memory and cognition in humans before I began to work with elephants...For that, I worked with a professor at Vassar College, who came with me to Botswana.  We worked with an elephant researcher there to ‘translate’ the way elephants think and the way humans think, what’s alike and what’s different.  Their levels of cognition are extraordinarily similar to ours...Any time you start talking about an afterlife or about the grief caused by people leaving us, you move into a spiritual realm.  The thing about watching elephants grieve is they seem to do it better than we do.  They don’t have the baggage we carry around, mostly because of religion.  They’re able to put (their grief) aside and live their lives.  People have a much harder time doing that.”  Her book is titled, Leaving Time.

   Things can change.  Life, in all forms, can again become something to treasure, something important.  And much of it begins with just knowing.  This is not the time to turn our heads and decide that it doesn't concern us, for soon it will be a tragic loss and we'll be left wondering why we didn't do something.  All life is precious and often we will seek a better life, as depicted in the photo of refugees filling a boat as captured in Time (view their top photos of 2014 here).  With knowledge comes wisdom...and the key words there are KNOW and WISE.  Let's hope we can be both...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/books/article3157669.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/books/article3157669.html#storylink=cpy