Au revoir, les éléphants

Democratic and Republican rhetoric this week and next will call our attention to national and international problems that are difficult and complex, and that require tough decisions by the next administration. The politicians will propose their conflicting solutions.

Those are the "feel-good" problems, however. Far more emotionally devastating are the problems that seem to have no solution, problems that will inevitably grow worse as the years pass.

Take Africa and African wildlife, for example.

Despite the ravages of AIDS, which is killing millions of Africans (in Botswana alone, one of Africa's more properous countries, 35 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive), population growth in Africa is the highest in the world. Forty-three percent of the population is younger than 15. African food production per person is now 30 percent less than it was 40 years ago. The population of Africa will rise from 800 million now to 1.8 billion in only 40 years.

Where are all those sick, starving people going to live? Necessarily, in areas now inhabitated by wildlife, from the tiniest gazelle, to the quirky lemurs, to the iconic lions and great apes. Say your good byes. Our grandchildren, if lucky, can see surviving specimens in a zoo somewhere.

Most of these animals will die of starvation, thirst, and human poaching. South Africa is one of the more progressive African nations when it comes to wildlife management, and it has now returned to the culling of elephants in order to reduce those animals' devastating impact on fragile and shrinking habitat. Culling will grant these intelligent mammals a quick death, instead of slow starvation.

But do you know what "culling" an elephant herd really means? Here is a description by Karen E. Lange, from this month's National Geographic.

Toward the cool of evening, the helicopter took off, vultures trailing in its wake. The pilot approached the elephants from behind, coming in low over their backs to give the marksman a clear shot to the brain with his semiautomatic rifle. One bullet was usually enough. First the matriarch -- the group's leader, the repository of collective wisdom -- went down, and then the younger females and calves were picked off as they huddled around her body. Every member of the group was killed; any survivors would be too devastated by the loss of their closest companions to function normally. Immediately after the aerial assault, a ground crew arrived to shoot the rare elephant that was still alive.

Elephants are intelligent, and known for their emotional attachments. These culled elephants were the lucky ones, in today's Africa. Their lives ended quickly.

In a world of global starvation, of ethnic cleansing, it's perhaps perverse to worry about elephants, lions, monkeys, and giraffes -- not to mention trees and forests and jungle habitat -- when so much human suffering calls out for help. But we're all in it together. If we have to choose between the life of an elephant and the life of a man or woman, we of course will sacrifice the elephant. But we have to ask ourselves how we ever reached the point that such choices needed to be made. Why in this vast and often beautiful world, were we unable to find enough room for all species to live together?

Meanwhile, throughout Africa, families of elephants will be shot down one by one, while grieving over the bodies of their mothers. We can only stand by, and watch, and grieve ourselves.