Elephant
Lupan Point Sunset, Janice DeCovnick
Kruger National Park was the setting of my husband’s introduction to elephants. Of course we had been to zoos and such, but seeing an animal in the wild is an altogether different experience. He sat beside his father in an open air jeep in the wilds of South Africa, taking in the majesty of these creatures. It was 2013. Twenty or so elephants were milling around the savannah not far from them.
The elephants kept their distance while eyeing them.
My husband and his father decided to just stay awhile, so the jeep did not move. After some time the elephants moved closer. My husband was taking photographs. The trees and scrub brush sometimes made it difficult to get a clear shot. He found himself thinking, “Could you just move a little to the left?” in relation to one elephant who was feeding on some brush.
The elephant moved a little to the left; in astonishment, my husband took the shot. My husband was preparing a second photograph and thought, “Could you just extend your trunk up?” The elephant eyed him and reached up higher among the branches, extending his trunk upward. By now, my husband was completely astonished! He turned to the guide and asked, “Are elephants telepathic?” The guide smiled and said, “Oh yes!”
The babies came first, then the mothers. The babies were so very curious about these human beings sitting in the jeep. Their mothers kept a watchful eye. One particular baby came right up to the jeep.
My husband felt a feeling of warm honey flowing throughout his body and communed with this baby and then its mama, who eyed him carefully and gave him a friendly ear flap. This wild elephant mother came over to the jeep where he was sitting. She did not touch my husband, but she put her trunk right on the jeep rail where he was sitting. A curious elephant baby, possibly a curious elephant mama, and certainly a protective elephant mother.
When we left Africa in 2019 after four weeks in the bush, my husband and I looked at each other as we got on the plane and both said, “When do we go back?”
Over the next two years, we decided to write a book about elephants and to gather information about conservation efforts during our 2022 trip to Kenya. The profits of the book would go to support those conservation efforts. Jamie Mehrotra arranged for us to meet with several conservation organizations in Kenya: Save the Elephants, Big Life Foundation, Amboseli Trust for Elephants, and Reteti Elephant Orphanage. Our Kenyan guide, Dennis, also arranged for us to meet with Barbara McKnight, a scientist working with Tsavo Trust, and who has now started Tsavo Elephant Research.
Several findings became quite clear as we met with each of these organizations:
We need places for elephants to live unmolested by the human world. The African countries have national parks, but elephants require a great deal of room to roam. So they also need extensive additional sanctuaries. Elephants help create the ecosystems by their feeding habits, and many species thrive on the savannahs. Maintaining biodiversity requires that elephants survive. If we do not allow them enough room, elephants will not thrive and the whole ecosystem becomes endangered.
We need corridors for elephants that connect one elephant living space to another, so that elephants are kept away from farmland and human habitation. Land for elephant corridors is being bought up and sanctuaries are being created for this purpose, but more land for sanctuaries is needed. Effective means of keeping elephants out of human farmlands along these routes needs to be further developed; crops look mighty tasty to elephants!
Poaching is an obscenity. It is a beastly thing to do to an elephant and to any creature. The elephant is shot repeatedly and once dead, the tusks are harvested in a most brutal and bloody manner. If this highly social elephant is a mother with a calf, the calf is often witness to this slaughter of her mother . . . or his mother . . . helpless to stop the atrocity from happening. We must stop it for them. We must stop poaching in all of the African countries. Poaching has been reduced about 30% since 2006, but at the rate of loss of elephant lives, this magnificent species is on the road to extinction. Some countries have been successful at stopping poaching completely, but others have been less so. We need to end poaching in all countries, permanently.
It will take hard work, research, time, and money to accomplish these goals. Communally, we can reach all of these goals once we put our minds to it, our hearts to it, and our souls to it. That is what we are about at Journey to the Well Productions, Inc. Our website, journeytothewellproductions.com, is a website for teaching people to contemplate nature to deepen our souls, and to care for the earth. We are devoting this year to the elephant. Each of our quarterly posts on the Care for the Earth page this year will tell you more about our amazing encounters with elephants!
Elephants are remarkable creatures. Highly sensitive, highly communicative, highly social, and highly intelligent, they have much to teach us. They care for one another, mourn the deaths of family members, are tender and affectionate with one another. They have joy.
Have you ever had an encounter with an elephant?
Where were you?
What did you experience?
What could you do to help save this amazing species?
