It is unbearable reading, and worse, seeing pictures of cruelty to children. We’ve had a surfeit of this with a drowned child lying comatose in a hospital bed. Those who watch American Idol would have shuddered at the tragedy that continues to trail the African mother and her child. The visuals however are to make known the charity that this most popular reality show has embarked on – giving food aid not only to African children but to the poor in America too. A recent highly appreciated interview was that between Ryan Seacrest and Bill and Melinda Gates on their huge philanthropic thrust to save children from malaria in Africa with the distribution of mosquito nets and from other diseases through immunization programmes which they personally monitor.

Almost equally sad it is to see pictures of dead elephants on TV. Elephants are such noble creatures; so huge and powerful yet so gentle in their general behaviour and tolerant of human beings who invade their privacy in hordes in noisy four wheel-drive vehicles that intrude the natural reserves and Minneriya tank – the latter incursion in July through September. Last July with visiting family we stayed in Habarana and spent an afternoon in the Minneriya Reserve. Our van driver cautioned the four wheel-drive powered vehicle chauffer not to go close to the herds since there were two kids excited over this all too rare sight. After a while of safe viewing, my daughter-in-law turned impatient. She asked the driver please to get closer. He did that, taking his vehicle almost into large herds. Then, just before leaving the reserve, he drove half way up an incline to see better a herd of about 30 elephants. The biggest turned, a cow elephant of course, looked us in the eye, and lumbered towards us in a leisurely, albeit deliberate manner. The jeep driver got into his seat from his perch on the footboard, and started reversing. The elephant stopped and the driver stopped. The elephant moved towards us again indicating we really must push off. Once we retreated a good distance, she went back to tending her herd. My elder nephew was scared but to the younger one of six years, it was such an exciting happening. My heart was in my mouth!! Proof it was that the elephant claimed her territory and once we obliged, she went her way almost mouthing the sentiment: "You humans can watch us as much as you like and we tolerate you and the disturbance of your vehicles. But give us our space and we give you yours. We need to protect our young.’’ "

Just last evening (Thursday) MTV news flashed pictures of three dead elephants with the awful announcement that within the last three months, 36 had been killed – shot at, or trapped. One had stepped on a deliberately hidden bomb which exploded. We saw recently on TV news a baby and his mother struggling in a huge water hole, a man-made, muddy crater. The calf was dragged to safety by Wild Life officers assisted by villagers and went berserk seeing his mother still in danger. She struggled further against the Samaritans having lost her baby. But rescued they both were, to lumber fast and furious to the jungle. We’ve heard of electrocuted elephants and those who have been injured by gunshot and died a slow and painful death. Mercifully the elephant population has been on the rise and probably this species is out from the endangered list, and no longer having the sword of extinction hanging over them. The Pinnawela elephant orphanage and magnanimous elephant owners have helped in the preservation and breeding in captivity of elephants. This latter was unheard of until Sam Samarasinghe, elephant owner of Kegalla had, for the first time, a cow elephant giving birth to a baby while in the group of tamed elephants he owned some years ago.

The threat of the severe conflict between elephants and man and their losing to gunpowder still hangs heavily over the creatures. The man-elephant contest for space, for traditional pathways and for water continues with increasing ferocity. Sympathy goes in full measure to the villagers who live in constant danger of elephants invading their homes in search of salt and water and then enraged, attacking homes and persons. The dumb, usually peaceable elephants also earn our deep sympathy and concern. Increasing human population has to be given land but it should definitely not be by encroaching on traditional elephant preserves and their paths of migration in search of water through the seasons. They cannot change their route, hence the attack on cultivations and homes of intruding humans. In this instance, humans must give way to the pachyderm, since the latter acts by instinct. It is the duty of the government to give full attention to the problem and relocate people with more than full compensation from traditional elephant preserves. Also ban cultivation across elephant corridors. Not an impossible task if there is urgency felt and responsibility taken for the task.

I mention responsibility since there is marked passing of the buck, more so when more than 100 ministers headed almost that number of ministries, some subject areas broken into bits or more than one minister assigned the same subject like nation building. Traveling in a van some years ago I heard a debate about the elephant-man conflict. Ministries and their secretaries were approached and the radio announcer made clear that each put the onus of taking responsibility and acting on another like the Wild Life Department on the Environmental Authority.

The New Yorker of April 5 carries a long article about a dedicated-to-animals couple, graduate students of the University of Georgia who uprooted themselves from their home in Atlanta in the early 1970s and settled down in a place called Deception Valley in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Mark and Delia Owens were just 24 and 29; he a divorced father of a four year old son. They loved each other and their adopted country; the animals of the land; the good Africans they had dealings with, hated and hunted poachers and inefficient park rangers, almost divorced and actually lived apart for a short while since Delia objected to Mark flying all hours of the night in his single engine Cessna accusing him of willfully courting danger and death. Mark and Delia reunited, had terrible problems with the government of Botswana and later Zambia; co-wrote several books, had the son joining them, earned a Masters degree and a PhD respectively. The article is most about a huge conflict created by the shooting of a poacher. More interesting is the fact that the couple did an immense amount to stop poaching of elephants for ivory, killing of animals for the pot and helping the people of the places they stayed in, notwithstanding their sometimes biased attitudes to the indigenous peoples.

Poaching was small business for the impoverished people of the area and big business for syndicates. Many villagers had been relocated by the British in their demarcation of animal reserves. These were the small poachers for food, mostly. The bigger networked groups of Zambians and foreigners were in search of ivory, specially after the ivory boom in Asia around the 1970s and 80s. In one park alone, the elephant population of 70,000 in 1960 reduced itself in 1986 when the Owens settled down in Zambia to a mere 5,000. Ivory was priced at more than a hundred dollars a pound in the international market and so in places like North Luangwa, the elephant became by necessity an industry.

The Owens settled in an evacuated Bisa village and named their homestead Marula-Puka, after the marula tree and the puka, a type of antelope common in the area. Realizing their poverty drove the men of the villages to poaching, they decided, by raising funds, to improve the lot of the villagers. They started small industries like fish ponds, sunflower oil presses, grinding mills and began programs to educate children, particularly on the importance of the preservation of fauna and flora. Delia is reported to have said: "Imagine us walking into these primitive villages where the children are hungry and saying: ‘If you stop shooting wild animals, tourists from America will come, and you’ll have jobs and food.’ We thought they’d look at us like we were crazy. But they’ve caught on." Their first forage into the rehabilitation of the villagers was Mark dropping soccer balls from his plane with an elephant drawn on each ball and the message ‘Play soccer. Don’t Poach Elephants.’

I am sure we have local stories of saving elephants, and people with humanitarian projects. I hope the new government will give of its attention and time to saving men and elephants who pit themselves against each other through man-wrought circumstances.