The move to drop
the USA ban on big-game trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia is ill
conceived. The US Fish and Wildlife Service does a disservice to
the most massive mammal on earth—pachyderms whose pregnancy cycle may run longer
than 18 months and need for space increasingly sees their extermination with a
30% decrease from 2007-2014.
As game mammals
and other undomesticated animals find their spaces to roam threatened witnessed
by civilizations intrusion on animal habitats here, such as that for the bison
and deer, hunting and poaching thrive underground. Elephants long
used as a beast of burden in clearing the paths for the very civilizations now
threatening to consume them to death while profanely and vainly
adorning man’s body with their ivory. Elephants
worldwide total less than 300,000.
How ironic that
Elephant protections are now being considered for loosening by the very
political party—the Republicans, which has adopted them as their
mascot. Hopefully this doesn’t foreshadow things to come for Republicans
themselves as human citizen safety nets are being considered for
elimination. Pro-Environment/Conservation Republican Theodore
Roosevelt in 1906 established the US Forest Service, created 5 National Parks
and with its Antiquities Act led to18 National Monuments including 230 million
acres of protected land, 51 bird reserves, 4 game reserves and 150 National
Forests. Appreciating the threat to elephants, Quitman Arkansas has Riddle’s
Elephant & Wildlife Sanctuary; California Performing Animal Welfare
Society (PAWS); Fellsmere, FL The National Elephant Center; Polk City
FL Ringling Brothers Center for Conservation; and Hochenwald, TN’s
Elephant Sanctuary are the only
Elephant Reserves in the USA. Such should also exist in other cloistered areas
rather than allow adoption of wild animals by unlicensed
individuals.
Elephants are
competing for land in Africa and other locales where they live
with human growth and greed. Their long reproductive cycle impedes
their repopulation in a timely fashion; therefore if they are to survive mankind
must create a space for them. So too is it with lions, giraffes
and other “wild” animals who have been felled by those with an arsenal of guns
to wipe them out. Instead of adopting highways and
other things which seem absurd, go adopt an elephant or adopt a child to enhance
our beings. Also exert one’s individual responsibility to care and
nurture those within the circle of life.
Ada M. Fisher, MD, MPH is a licensed
teacher, retired Corporate physician, former county school board member,
speaker, author of Common Sense Conservative Prescriptions Good for What Ails Us
Book 1 (available through Amazon. Com) and is the NC Republican National
Committeewoman. Contact through DrFisher@DrAdaMFisher.com
