ANIMAL RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS WILL TAKE TOUGHER STANCE IF GOVERNMENT DISAPPOINTS ON ELEPHANT ISSUE

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Link: http://www.animalrightsafrica.org/PR_22Feb08_ToughStance.php

Press Release

ANIMAL RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS WILL TAKE TOUGHER STANCE IF GOVERNMENT

DISAPPOINTS ON ELEPHANT ISSUE *22 FEBRUARY 2008*

 

ARA is aware that the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism,

Marthinus Van Schalkwyk will be announcing the National Norms and Standards

for Elephant Management Elephant on Monday the 25th February.

 

Promoting international tourist boycotts, public protests and legal

challenges are among the measures that Animal Rights Africa (ARA) says it

will resort to if the soon to be announced National Norms and Standards for

Elephant Management (NNSEM) in South Africa persists in legalizing culling

as a means of controlling elephant numbers in South Africa.

 

Since the process to draft the NNSEM in South Africa began, ARA has

consistently presented strong and irrefutable ethical, scientific and

historical arguments opposing the inclusion of culling as a management

option. However it seems that the South African Minister of Environmental

Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, and his team have not taken

heed of what we presented to them and continue to bow to pressure from

private landowners and South African National Parks (SANParks). These

ideologues and proponents of 'sustainable use,' want to reduce elephants to

mere objects and commodities and want culling as a 'tool in their management

box' based on the untrue contention that there are 'too many' elephants.

Whilst having publicly expressed concerns about elephant welfare on the one

hand, even making references to the 'rights' of elephants, the Minister will

still be allowing the undeniably cruel and morally reprehensible act of

culling to be retained as a management option.

 

By supporting the recent SADC decision to manage elephants in the region as

a sustainable commodity, to be hunted and culled for profit, by including

culling as a management option in the NNSEM and by failing to take a stand

against the captive elephant industry, the South Africa government has shown

that the welfare of elephants is not on its list of concerns. A management

policy that shows genuine concern for elephants, and who they really are,

would acknowledge recent studies on neurological development that show that

humans and elephants share the same generalized " emotional brain " as well as

associated physiological and behavioural traits (e.g. fear conditioning;

attachment and social bonding, pain, aggression, anxiety, and facial

recognition). Elephants show a diversity of higher cognitive capacities

including tool-use, exceptional long-term and episodic memory, intention,

complex chemosensory and auditory communication, context learning,

reasoning, problem-solving capabilities, and the ability to perform

premeditated acts. The latest research has proved that elephant have a sense

of self-awareness, placing them in a unique category together with great

apes, dolphins and humans. How much like us do elephants have to be before

killing them becomes murder?

 

Elephants are being commodified into goods and chattel. Within the global

economic culture of consumption and utilization, the future of elephants as

a species has largely been left up to the market to decide. Elephants are

literally 'paying their way' with their lives. This commodification of

living beings is evidenced by the mushrooming of the elephant-back safari

industry and the spearheading of, and lobbying for, the voracious ivory

trade by Southern African countries. The violence being executed on

elephants is a microcosm of the planetary social and ecological crisis

brought about by globalization, insatiable extraction, and the brutal

domination of human over human, and human over nature. The challenges we

face when dealing with elephants open the door to more fundamental

challenges about the way we live our lives and our attitudes and behaviour

towards other living beings and the planet. This debate is taking place

within a context of a rapidly spreading awareness of how much destruction

humans have caused and an increasing understanding that our current approach

to these issues is unsustainable.

 

What we have learned about elephants means that we have to face the very

real ethical issues that our current management policies confront us with.

Literally threatening the lives of elephants by passing legislation that

allows elephant managers the option of deciding whether or not to cull

so-called " excess " elephants demonstrates a complete lack of understanding

about everything that makes elephants who they are, and is a slap in the

face to all those individuals and groups that have spent vast amounts of

time and other resources participating in a process that has promised so

much but failed to deliver on the most crucial issue of respecting elephants

as individuals with inherent value. By abandoning the colonialist-apartheid

mindset of using the gun as a quick solution to perceived, but unproven,

problems, in this case the so-called elephant overpopulation, the South

African government could demonstrate that it has truly embraced non-violence

and tolerance as its underpinning principles of governance. However, it has

failed to do this.

 

ARA will definitely seek legal advice on the South African support for the

SADC elephant management plan as we believe that it is both unconstitutional

and an act of bad faith. We will appeal to the international animal rights

community to use its not inconsiderable membership and corporate influence

to support a call for tourists to boycott our national parks should elephant

culling be retained as a management option in the NNSEM, and we will

continue to campaign relentlessly for an end to the captive elephant

industry in South Africa.

 

 

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United against elephant polo

http://www.stopelephantpolo.com