Can Trump Save the Elephants? by Dr Ada M Fisher

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