Getting ivory from an elephant takes effort, and brutality. Poachers are rampaging throughout the African continent with guns, grenades and poisoned spears, targeting elephants from Gabon to Mozambique to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the organization African Parks recently documented the massacre of 68 elephants. Not only did the poachers shoot some of the animals from helicopters and then hack off their tusks with chainsaws, they reportedly also took the elephants genitals - and brains. ... Maybe another excuse is that, in a world where human desperation is rampant, why spend precious journalistic time on the plight of elephants? Last week, a public radio editor asked me to write an essay about Why should elephant poaching in Africa matter to Americans? I thought of answering that question with the pat scientific response: Elephants are instrumental to a healthy ecosystem. Or, with a social tenor: Elephants care about their families; they mourn their dead; they are self-aware. But, frankly, I find journalists who want proof about Why elephants matter already assume they dont. And maybe this is the rub. ... So, while the most influential media shops continue to treat this crisis with only an occasional story here and there, elephants keep dying excruciating deaths. And these magnificent animals have no way to fight back against the enemy. We, however, have the mighty pen. So, I implore fellow journalists, please take up the tool and start writing. Now. Relentlessly. Ceaselessly. Like theres a war going on. Or else in a few years, when the elephants are nearly no more, the predictable headline will emerge and the talk show hosts, the editorial writers and the newscasters will ask that tiresome question usually left when little has been done to stop the inevitable: How, my god, did this happen?
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 08:18:02 +0000
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