The Destroyers

Most people think of elephants as cute stuffed animal toys or interesting unusual creatures in a zoo.  The truth is quite different.  Frankly, elephants are destroying the habitat of all the animals in the African wild.  The population of elephants in the area of Botswana’s Okavango delta has risen to nearly 200,000.  This is primarily due to loss of migration routes and bans on hunting.  The loss of migration is entirely human interference.  Human civilization and politics have cut off the usual migration of elephant herds.  The result is the elephant populations are restricted to smaller areas, areas which cannot sustain the current population growth.  The second reason for this tragedy is environmental activism.  Botswana and other neighboring countries refuse to confront the “Greenpeace” lobbies.  As a result, these countries have not controlled the elephant population by hunting or culling.  Now it is almost too late.  According to our guide on a recent trip through this area, the elephant population should be about 30,000.  That means 170,000 elephants need to be killed.  Killing them is not the problem.  The problem is the political fallout and the expense.  Imagine the worldwide outcry from uninformed environmentalists if the government of Botswana announced that it was going to kill 170,000 elephants.  Then imagine what it would cost to do that.  It isn’t the price of the bullets.  It’s the price of removing and destroying 170,000 dead elephants.  After all, you can’t leave them in the wild to rot.  The consequences of that choice are just as devastating.

So, nothing is done.  As a result, the elephants are literally stripping the land of all vegetation.  We drove for 800 kilometers and saw millions of dead trees, destroyed by elephants who stripped them of their bark for food.  We saw destroyed forests, broken bushes and desolate areas that once were homes to all kinds of wildlife.  Now there is nothing to eat, no protection and no livable habitat.  In fact, the Okavango, once Africa’s premier natural wildlife area, is dying.  The green vegetation ends about 30 feet from the water’s edge.  All the rest is sand and sticks.  Of course, nature will correct this.  The massive population of elephants will eventually extinguish all life-sustaining vegetation and the elephants will starve to death by the thousands.  But before that happens, huge populations lower down the food chain will also die.  And nothing will be done to prevent this.

By the way, Namibia (next door) realizes that humans must take responsibility for animal population control and practices yearly culling of the half-million seal population.  And every year the environmentalists object.  But without culling the population, the same “elephant” problem would exist with seals.

The specter of death hangs over Africa.  It is not just the human death toll of politically motivated or racial genocide.  It is death by gross negligence of human stewardship of the earth.  Death is a way of life in the Delta.  It is survival of the fittest, most of the time.  But Africa today no longer enjoys this natural process.  Today death is coming to everything because Man will not take up God’s directive to manage the earth.