19/11/2019
Mana Pools is in the grip of the most severe drought that anyone can remember. It remains an exquisite and magical place but those of us who live here have witnessed the lingering misery of starvation. The lactating mother elephants seem to be particularly vulnerable and when they die, they leave vulnerable babies.
Recently I was contacted by “Wild is Life” and requested to assist in the rescue of a very young calf. I had seen this baby pathetically hanging around the carcass of its dead mother trying to find enough to eat, although there was almost no food to be had and anyway the youngster was too young to survive without the sustenance of its mother’s milk.
With absolutely no prior experience and no idea how we would manage this, my staff and I leapt into action. Miraculously we located the baby and began to capture it. Suddenly some friends, the staff from “Wild is Life” appeared together with a vet and National Parks pitched-in. With all the assistance, we managed to subdue this traumatized baby elephant, that was airlifted to Harare to begin its rehabilitation with Wild is Life.
Since that time the “Camp Mana Team” has been involved with the rescue of another 4 orphaned elephants. The process is exhausting and it can be emotionally draining when we see the mothers die, but a successful rescue is exhilarating. Our work is just the start of the hard work and years of commitment by “Wild is Life” until these babies are finally released back into the wild in Zimbabwe.
I made a point of visiting the “Wild is Life” facility in Harare, not only to see how the babies were doing but to ensure that they were being well cared for and I found a dedicated team of professionals working around the clock in an excellent environment. I am satisfied that these baby elephants are receiving the best possible care and I am proud of my team for the small part that we played in rescuing them.
Lately I have heard people suggesting that we should not be “interfering with nature”. I have a few retorts to this mind-set:
1) As a species, we have been “interfering with nature” since the industrial revolution. In the midst of the industrial revolution it is estimated that there were 26 million elephants in Africa. It is believed that today there are a lot fewer than half a million elephants remaining in the wild in Africa. That is just one statistic that points to how much we have already interfered with nature. (During the same period the human population has increased from an estimated 90 million to 1,3 billion)
2) In times past, wild animals faced with natural disasters such as the current drought would have been able to migrate to other areas but this is no longer possible because mankind has occupied most of the planet, leaving no space into which animals can move. Furthermore, following large scale wildlife mortalities there would have been recruitment of animals from adjacent areas but nowadays there are no animals in the adjacent areas.
3) Whenever there is a human disaster, we leap into action to alleviate suffering and save human life. For some reason that I will never understand, showing the same compassion to wild animals is somehow seen as “interference”.
4) By and large the suggestion that we should not assist (read “interfere with”) wildlife, comes from people who have not watched first hand as baby elephants lie down alongside the carcass of their mother for comfort. Nor have they watched as an otherwise healthy adult elephant kneels down in the sand and dies with its tusk speared into the ground. They have not watched elephants lie in 40-plus degree heat and struggle in vain for 4 agonsing days to stand-up before death releases them. They have not watched emaciated buffalo stagger back and forth from the water’s edge looking for grazing that simply does not exist (& was last seen months ago). They have not seen gaunt Waterbuck stumble on wasted muscles, as if stricken with rheumatism. They have also not contemplated one or two new elephant & buffalo carcasses EVERY day – often untouched by predators and scavengers because there is simply too much for them to eat.
Well, I and others like me have lived for weeks and months watching such suffering and while we believe in minimal interference in the natural world, we have absolutely no hesitation in working as hard as possible to alleviate this suffering that is without doubt the result of the dominion and poor stewardship of humankind over our delicate planet and all of the species with whom we should be sharing it.
