Dear Elefriend and Supporter,
Here is the latest happenings at Pachyderm Power! Love in Action to Save Elephants...
1. Saturday (tomorrow), I will be interviewed on the radio for 60 - 75 minutes, starting at about 12:45pm (MST). You can listen live by going to the link below, or you can download it later and listen at your leisure:
www.blogtalkradio.com/thepawzcauze
2. Next week I will be doing seven (!) school shows about elephants called: The Amazing Wonders of Elephants. This is my multi-media, interactive, educational and entertaining show I do in schools.... educating future generations about the beauty, majesty and wonder of elephants.
3. As many of you already know, on May 1st, South Africa will be lifting their ban on the killing of their elephants. Thousands are at risk, turning South Africa into a Killing Field of Elephants. I will be leaving on April 27 on an emergency mission to South Africa to speak on behalf of the elephants, to hand deliver hundreds of letters from school children, and do everything I can to stop the massacre. If you would like to participate with me through your financial support (I need all the help you wish to give), please click on here to donate on line:
http://www.kristalparks.com/pachyderm/donate.htm
or send your financial participation to:
Kristal Parks
1620 Utica St.
Denver, CO 80204
4. I made the YouTube below. Please view and send to your friends.
|
The Killing Fields of Elephants in South Africa... |
watch video
5. Please send a polite email to: Minister Van Schalkwyk, South Africa's Minister of the Environment and Tourism and plead on behalf of the elephants: ministry@deat.gov.za
On Behalf of Elephants,
Thank you,
Kristal
Kristal Parks, M.A.
www.PachydermPower.org
KristalParks@earthlink.net
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"The news that South Africa is set to resume the brutal culling of
elephants comes as no surprise, for it is commercially
driven."
South Africa to resume the Culling of the Kruger elephants
(Scroll down for letter)
The
news that South Africa is set to resume the brutal culling of
elephants comes as no surprise, for it is commercially
driven. China has an insatiable demand for Ivory, and a
burgeoning wealthier population, all of whom covet this
commodity. However, China is not the only large
consumer of illegal ivory – there is Japan and, strangely enough,
the United States which is another major repository for illegal
ivory, something uncovered in a recent study.
Basically, as long as there is a demand for ivory, and those who
want to buy it, the Southern African States, who purport to have “
too many” elephants, will push, not just to market their Ivory
Stockpiles from the past culling, (which are probably now
exhausted), but seek to acquire
more.
During decades of
“apartheid”, the Boer inhabitants of South Africa always had a very
strong culture of killing wild game. In fact, they
almost wiped out their wildlife entirely, so much so that when the
Kruger National Park was set aside in the 1920’s as a Sanctuary (by
an Englishman named Stevenson Hamilton), the animal remnant that
had survived that slaughter could be counted on the fingers of just
one hand. Sadly the modern day Boer conservation
replacements have likewise shown little or no compassion for
animals, having inherited the brutal ethic of institutionalized
cruelty, exacerbated by the doctrine of so-called “sustainable
utilization”. “If it Pays, it Stays”, is their
philosophy, something that is always open to cheating and abuse.
South Africa is renowned for its blatant cruel animal
practices, for instance, the auction of wild animals taken from
protected areas to be sold for hunting purposes, (including rhinos)
its infamous Canned Lion industry, the abduction of young elephants
from their living families for elephant back riding and also, in
the past, for sale to Circuses and third rate Zoos in distant
lands. Recently, a remark made by the South African Parks Head of
Communications says it all He allegedly stated “Our
business is not the preservation of animals”.
In fact it
is the exploitation of animals for in Southern Africa the natural
world, irrespective of species, exists for just one reason – to
financially benefit humans.
Following the
international outcry over the brutality of earlier culls, the much
publicized trans-frontier Peace Parks were supposed to provide the
alternative by allowing elephants to spill out into adjoining “safe
havens” in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, once a stronghold for
elephants. However, these “safe havens” have instead
been infested with hordes of human squatters, who snare, hunt
and cut down hardwoods for charcoal. No elephant
in its right mind would dare set foot there.
All
caring people can voice their disapproval by writing to the
Environment Minister in South Africa, Mr. Marthinus van Schalkwyk,
Email wandam@sanparks.org whose postal address
you could get from their Embassy, and ask him two very pertinent
questions.
(1)
Will they be using scholine, darting the elephants from Helicopters
as before? This is a drug that merely incapacitates the
animal, whilst it remains fully conscious and the brutal ground
teams move in, jumping on and over paralyzed elephants to finish
off all the others (and previously capture the young for Circuses
and Zoos.) The choice of scholine as a preferred drug is
because it does not contaminate the meat which can then be marketed
for gain – another commercial incentive. (It is telling that
in the National Geographic News, they talk about killing the
Matriarch and all the young bulls within a unit with no mention of
the females - why?)
(2) If they
want to artificially control their elephant numbers humanely, as
they claim they would like to do, why do they not dart the
elephants with an anaesthetic before moving in to shoot them, so
that the animals are unconscious when the dirty deed is
done? The answer is, of course, that they want the meat
as well as the ivory in addition to the hide, the tail hairs, the
feet for waste-paper baskets, the bones and anything else they can
market.
The
culling of entire family units is not only brutal and inhumane, but
doesn’t solve anything, because it merely relieves the pressure on
the land, so that the breeding rate goes up instead of down, and
culling becomes accepted management practice, as it was in the
past. Elephants communicate with low frequency
infra-sound, and the moment the Helicopters take to the air, and
the gunshots go off, the entire Kruger Park population of elephants
knows all about it! It has been Scientifically proven
that elephants have a superior memory to mankind, a brain that
reasons and thinks, and share with humans the same sense of family
and sense of death, so if we find it abhorrent to cull our fellow
humans, who are not only over-populated but also destroying the
entire planet, what right have we to wade into the Elephants, (and
the whales, in the case of the Japanese) when Nature exacts its own
time old controls, which, in terms of elephants, have been proven
in Tsavo. Who decides that there are too many,
anyway? Only Nature can do that, for elephants are
designed to change woodland to grassland, and plant a new
generation of trees in their dung. Having done this,
and overtaken their food resource, Nature will enact its own humane
cull when the time is right, through malnutrition,
(which is painless and is not
starvation),
targeting females throughout the population, who are more
vulnerable, removing from the population the sick, the weak and the
maimed. This is Natural Selection and Nature’s most
powerful tool. A natural die-off of elephants is a
one-off event that only has to happen about once in a
century. Humans should not play God because half the
time they don’t know what repercussions will ensue. For
instance, is Mr. Schalkwyk able to predict that his country will
not suffer the same sort of corruption that has bedeviled the rest
of Africa and given rise to illegal poaching, when the warning
signs are already very real in his country? (Uganda did
this, and nearly lost its entire elephant population).
Is he able to predict the consequences of global warming on the
natural world? Is he able to predict that disease will
not take a toll of an elephant population in the future, or that
the elephants will not become aggressive and of a greater threat to
humans as a result?
When
in doubt, don’t!
We have as
an example of allowing Nature to take its course, the Tsavo
National Park in Kenya, which supported 45,000 elephants in its
l6,000 sq. mile ecosystem. Nature took out over l0,000
during the Great Drought of the early 70’s (the number the
Scientists were talking about artificially culling south African
style). The difference was that Nature targeted the
females and their young, which put the population into an
immediate decline
and rested
the vegetation, allowing regeneration.
Then corruption and illegal poaching brought the population down to
6,000 until that was brought under control in the early
90’s. It now stands at about 12,000 within the l6,000
sq. mile ecosystem (twice the size of the Park) and there is plenty
of room for more in Tsavo itself, which is exactly the same size as
the Kruger National Park – 8,000 sq. miles.
When
one speaks about elephants, one has to speak about the Africa wide
population, which is still declining, and which once stood at three
and a half million, but today is less than 400,000 and severely
threatened in most range States North of the
Zambezi.
The
usual cry that elephants destroy their habitat is also flawed, as
the following images will confirm, taken from the exact same spot,
during the exact same month, but at a 20 year interval.
From being a Park that the Trustees thought not worth keeping in
the l950’s because of its low tourist appeal when under dense
Commiphora scrub thicket, Tsavo today is the highest revenue
earning Park in Kenya – thanks to the work of the
elephants!
Everyone must speak out
about the brutal and misguided policy of culling elephants in South
Africa, and spend their tourist dollars in a country that treats
its animals humanely. In this, the 21st Century, when so much
more is known about elephants, it is simply not acceptable for
Politicians to decide to massacre them.
With
best wishes. Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick
From:
"Angela Sheldrick - The
David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust"
Date: February 28, 2008
To: "Trudi
Humphry-Rankin"
Subject: Re: South African cull
From: LePetitChien
Subject: please dó what is right, it´ll
féel right..
Date: March 17, 2008 6:40:07 PM GMT+00:00
To:
ministry@deat.gov.za
Cc:
info@animalrightsafrica.org
Dear
Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk,
The Cull Video
at
www.bornfree.org.uk/campaigns/elephants/campaign-action/elephant-cull/cull-video/
is
one of the saddest things I have ever seen for Elephants Families
that cannot help that they exist, and have to endure terror on
their loved ones, what a nightmare!
On www.celsias.com/2008/02/28/south-africa-to-permit-the-killing-of-elephants/ we
read wat you said about the Kruger Parks Current Elephant
Population:
Quote´Culling
will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict
conditions. Our simple reality is that elephant population density
has risen so much in some southern African countries that there is
concern about impacts on the landscape, the viability of other
species and the livelihoods and safety of people living within
elephant ranges. – CNN End Quote
(also see CNN´s report
at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u7ngrH2xBI)
Those “very
strict conditions,” you talk about and most likely be
effective of May 1st, constitute a rifle with a minimum
caliber of .375.
We
understand that overgrazing by elephants can degrade the
environment, damage farms and local villages, and diminish food and
water resources for other wildlife as well as the elephants
themselves. However, you know and cán check for instance on google
to see lots of other options that exist on birth
control.
These
options will take a longer time for the Elephant
population to decline, but is on the other hand réally humane and a
responsible method for ány empathic person that posseses ´thinking
with compassion´ skills.
Let´s play the
role of compassionate conservationists and pléase postpone the
option of culling Elepants in your decision until you have
something that feels right, for ´the time is always right to
do what is right´ (ML.King)
Thank you for
your interest in our scream for mercy regarding this problem
with the Elephants in your country.
(More
info to find on
www.animalrightsafrica.org/ and
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPBksjF1ai8)
Yours,
Le Petit
Chien
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
(EU)
“I do not believe that South Africa should cull its
elephants. There are several humane alternatives available,
including range expansion and
contraception.”
*
. * . *
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7301195.stm "The eminent conservationist Richard Leakey has given qualified backing for South Africa's plan to cull elephants." - ?!?!?!?