into the wild

In the article that I chose to discuss this week, titled “Conservation and Behavior of Africa’s ‘Big Five’” by Tim Caro and Jason Riggio, the effect that Africa’s big five (lion, leopard, buffalo, black and white rhinoceros, and the elephant) behavioral knowledge in their conservation was explored. With population of the African elephant now estimated to be around 500,000, the IUCN has listed it as vulnerable. This is mainly due to the demand for ivory in China that is growing rapidly due to an expanding middle class. These elephants that remain exist largely in protected areas and they travel through “corridors” to other enclosed areas to feed. These are necessary to spread out the damage that the elephants can cause on an area. Elephants can turn a woodland into a grassland very fast, and could end up running themselves extinct if they are not free to roam. These corridors are becoming more and more infrequent due to them being broken up by the human population. Elephant hunting is actually accepted by many African countries mostly because it brings in tourists and that means more money for their economy. Elephants are matriarchal and bulls are normally solitary, rarely traveling in a group of more than 3. With all of this taken into account, it is much easier for conservationists to succeed in co-existing with these elephants.

I agree that this is a very important step to conserving not only elephants, but any animal. It is necessary to know and understand what an animal needs and how they exist without any human intervention before someone tries to step in and intervene for the growth of the animal populace. Because culling is hoped to be a last resort by all governments, I believe that hunting them, while I may not agree with it, will help keep the population under control but still able to thrive. Unlike culling, the government can take complete control of the trophy hunting and profits from it in large amounts. They even charge huge fees to transport the chosen trophy of the elephant back to whatever country the hunter is from. And the corridors that were mentioned earlier are also vital and I believe that more care should be taken to help these last. They truly are a network of different places for the elephant to thrive and also very important to keep the environment stable.

In the article that I chose to discuss this week, titled “Celebrities and Their Influence” published by Teen Ink Magazine, the vast influence that celebrities have on our young people was explored. Today’s media is overflowing with information about what all of the celebrities are doing, whether it be them going to the grocery store or vacuuming the trunk of their car at their local gas station, it’s documented and out there for everyone to see. Millions of young people have access to this “news” through social media and know almost immediately what their favorite star is up to. But what happens when a celebrity is photographed with a cigarette in their hand? Or coming back into the public eye having lost 30 pounds due to whatever new fad diet they tried this month? Young people are so easily influenced by them because they look up to them so much. If they see them smoking a cigarette, or dropping weight to be “more attractive” in the public eye, it encourages them that these things are necessary to be “cool” or “popular” among all of the other teenagers that think these celebrities are so incredible. Many of these celebrities don’t think twice about the negative influence that they could be having on our youth.

While many areas in Africa are struggling with elephant populations disappearing from their environment, certain areas in Southern Africa are having quite the opposite problem. In the article that I chose to respond to titled “Desperate Measure” by Karen E. Lange from National Geographic, a shocking practice was brought to my attention. In 1989, before this practice was banned, along with the international ivory ban, culling was a way that South Africa controlled their elephant population and also took charge of the ivory trade. Culling was the slaughter of entire herds at a time. A transmitter would often be shot into the matriarch and then, once they located the areas where the elephants were most dense, they would launch an aerial attack and begin shooting each elephant in the back of the head, starting with that matriarch and then the other females and finishing with the calves. Then, a ground crew would come in and strip the elephants of their tusks and take their meat to be cured. It was said that in the Kruger National Park alone, an incredible 14,562 elephants were culled from 1967 and 1989. In this park, since the culling ban was put in place, the population of elephants has risen from 8,000 to 13,000. These numbers are due to the successful conservation of these species in South Africa, but the success rate has also opened back up the question of whether or not culling should again become an option. In many areas, the ecosystem is not strong enough to support them, as the elephants can eat upwards of 400 pounds of food a day.

In an article recently posted on the website newsweek.com, an interesting question was brought to my attention. Does destroying ivory actually help save elephants all over Africa? Destroying ivory that has been intercepted by authorities is not a new practice in Africa, it was started in 1989 when the President of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi, burned a record setting amount of ivory at 12 tons. This was right after the international ban on ivory was passed. Of course on March 3rd, 2015, President Uhuru Kenyatta marked Africa Environmental Day by burning 15 metric tons of ivory. Over the past 26 years, millions of dollars’ worth of ivory have been literally burned in order to “save” the elephants, but is it actually helping? Discouraging poaching by intercepting and confiscating all of the ivory has actually shown no improvement in the amount of elephants inhabiting Africa, if anything, it has had the opposite effect. A 2014 study showed that about 100,000 African elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012, this data proves that only a small fraction of the ivory in the market is intercepted. Some would argue that burning all of the ivory that has been taken from these animals is a waste of a natural resource, but most disagree.

Known best for her role as Charlotte in Sex and the City, Kristin Davis has recently found her love for elephants. While watching an episode of 60 Minutes, Kristin saw a segment about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and decided that on her next visit to Kenya, she was going to have to make a stop there. When she eventually made it there, she actually became a part of an elephant rescue! This experience moved her so much so that she decided to make it her life’s mission to bring awareness to poaching and how easily it can be stopped. In 2011 the Humane Society awarded her with the Wyler Award for all of the awareness that she brought to poaching and illegal ivory trading. The Wyler Award is named after the late Gretchen Wyler and is given out specifically to celebrities that have made the news on behalf of the animals that they are supporting. A few other celebrities that have received this reward are Sir Paul McCartney, who was actually the first recipient, Ian Somerhalder, Ellen DeGeneres, and Hayden Panettiere.

The piece of media that I chose was a documentary about a little elephant that was put under the care of a woman named Daphne Sheldrick, called My Wild Affair. The Sheldrick family, based in a small town in Kenya, was known for their abundance of animals that thrived on their land. They had ducks, rhinos, wild hogs, antelope, and almost any exotic animal that one could think of. Among these wild animals were a few orphaned elephants, but none were quite as challenging as Aisha. Aisha was found in a well and had been abandoned by her mother, she was the youngest calf that the rescuers had ever seen. It was a miracle that Aisha even survived the trip to Daphne, but the real troubles had not even begun for this family. Right away Daphne knew that taking care of Aisha would be much harder than any of the other elephants, simply because of her young age. After many different combinations of formula for Aisha, they finally felt as though they had found a formula most similar to elephant’s milk, they felt as though she could finally survive. Daphne and Aisha had formed a bond much like a mother and her calf, and after Daphne had to leave for her daughter’s wedding, Aisha refused to eat. This later resulted in her death. Using all of the information she gained from little Aisha, Daphne Sheldrick went on to found the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust that has successfully put over 250 abandoned calves back into the wild.

Ian Somerhalder is an American actor, model and director. He was born in 1978 in the small town of Covington, Louisiana which is actually not very far from my home town at all. He is best known for playing Boone Carlyle in the TV drama Lost and starring as Damon Salvatore in The CW's supernatural drama The Vampire Diaries. But perhaps his work that is unfortunately most underrated, the Ian Somerhalder Foundation, is without a doubt his most important and has the most impact on the world.

The Ian Somerhalder Foundation (ISF) views the environment as an interconnected organism of which we as humans are not separate but a part of. They believe there is no differentiation between all living things: trees, rivers, animals and humans. They also believe that we are all one interdependent organism. With those views in mind, the ISF raises money and awareness for taking care of our environment and keeping track and helping animals that could be going extinct or are in danger of going extinct. The ISF truly has the best intentions for global conservation and ideas to keep the world not only just as it is, but improve upon the world that the next generation will grow up in.