Elephants & Ethics

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:

(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)

 

 

Elephants & Ethics:

Toward a Morality of Coexistence

Edited by Christen Wemmer & Catherine A. Christen

Johns Hopkins University Press (2715 N. Charles

St., Baltimore, MD 21218), 2008. 483 pages,

hardcover. $75.00.

 

 

" We have been defining our relationships

with the elephants for as long as we have been

people, " opens John Seidensticker in his preface

to Elephants & Ethics: Toward a Morality of

Coexistence. " When discussing the ethics of

human/elephant relationships, " he adds, " we

should keep in mind a historical reality: In any

confrontation, elephants almost always lose. "

Seidensticker in the next several

paragraphs traces the 3,000-year retreat of wild

elephants from Beijing to the Myanmar border. As

rice cultivation enabled the rise of civilization

in China, the conversion of former lowland

forests to paddies steadily reduced elephant

habitat.

Elephants within the human epoch have

thrived only at the edges of the human range,

but humans now dominate every habitat where wild

elephants live.

About a third of all Asian elephants now

live in captivity, causing Seidensticker to

suggest that the Asian elephant species may be

" sliding into domesticity like camels, " if not

to extinction, because " we are nearing the end

game for elephants living and working in zoos and

circusesŠin the hospice stage, " characterized by

the recent movement of elephants into

sanctuaries, where all efforts to breed them are

abandoned, while former elephant exhibition

venues are closed and dismantled.

African elephants are believed to be more

difficult to keep in captivity than their Asian

kin, and are therefore fewer, with so very few

captive males that some experts question whether

African elephants could be maintained at all from

zoo and circus stock.

Though African elephants remain abundant

in protected habitat in parts of their native

range, most African wildlife agencies are

struggling to keep diminished national elephant

herds, even as many of the citizens of their

nations work just as hard to keep the few

remaining wild elephants from consuming crops,

destroying homes, and trampling any humans who

get in the way.

Even an elephant who is just happily

being an elephant can be as menacing as an

enraged hippopotamus or a hungry tiger, lion,

crocodile, or polar bear. The threat is

compounded by the herd behavior of elephants,

and the testosterone-fueled rages of bull

elephants in musth. Few species are more

difficult to live with; yet the intelligence of

elephants has for millennia inspired many humans

to try to find ways to accommodate elephants,

instead of just killing them off.

Putting elephants to work may have been

initially just a pragmatic alternative to killing

them, but even the earliest Indian and Chinese

texts on elephant keeping mingled practical and

ethical advice.

Though elephants are abused in capture

and habituation to human command, they are more

easily and safely coaxed than goaded. A

well-treated elephant will often work as a

partner with a mahout who is attentive to the

elephant's needs, and will grieve if the mahout

dies or leaves the elephant.

The practice of elephant keeping has

accordingly evolved as a sort of bad cop / good

cop juxtaposition, in which a young elephant is

initially subjected to deliberate mistreatment,

including beatings and deprivation of food, but

is supposed to be well-treated ever afterward,

unless willfully disobedient.

Perhaps the most essential part of the

training process is teaching the elephant that

life with humans requires living within a

framework of rules, which includes some rules

that are beneficial to the elephant.

Humans probably first contemplated

ethical behavior toward animals in evolving our

relationship with dogs, but working with

elephants required working with animals of

extraordinary memory, as well as physical

strength. While dogs may be infinitely

forgiving, elephants can hold a grudge

throughout a lifespan as long as human lives.

Controlling elephants is in large part a

matter of convincing them that they are fairly

treated by their handlers, even when punished.

Though physically dominating an elephant is

possible through use of restraints, and is where

much abuse occurs, it is not practical to

simultaneously restrain the elephant and get the

elephant to work.

The 22 essays comprising Elephants &

Ethics: Toward a Morality of Coexistence evolved

out of papers presented at a 2003 symposium

hosted by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums

entitled " Never Forgetting: Elephants and

Ethics. "

Several contributors, including Lori

Alward, Jane Garrison, and David Hancocks,

oppose keeping elephants in captive situations,

at least as they have so far existed.

Other contributors, especially those who

discuss elephants in the wild, are acutely aware

that " the wild " now consists of increasingly

limited habitats, surrounded by human

development. There are only a handful of places,

worldwide, to extend and enlarge " wild " elephant

range. Because elephant range is finite,

limiting the elephant population to what the

range can sustain is essential.

The issue is not whether the wild

elephant population will be controlled, but how.

Methods include culling for ivory and hides,

trophy hunting, poaching, outraged neighbors of

elephant habitat shooting and poisoning rogue

elephants, and applications of birth control

techniques which show promise in some situations

but are yet to be perfected and broadly accepted.

Along the way, some questions need to be

answered that none of the Elephants & Ethics

contributors even seem to have asked.

For example, elephant depredation tends

to be as destructive as it is because elephants

are not only very large animals, but also tend

to live in either matriarchal herds of a dozen or

more, sometimes guarded by dominant bulls, or

in smaller but thoroughly unruly bachelor herds,

rarely including mature males.

Has such gender imbalance and

distribution always been the norm among

elephants, or is it the result of centuries of

ivory hunting, poaching, and culling?

If gender balance was established, would fecundity slow?

Would female elephants remain in large

matriarchal herds, with dominant bulls thwarting

the mating ambitions of younger bulls, or would

elephant family life shift into paired

relationships or small herds, as among deer and

some elephants in remote places where there is

more gender balance?

Would young male elephants be less rowdy

if they had female companionship?

To what extent are " elephant problems "

actually relationship problems created by human

exploitation?

Could species-appropriate " social work "

ease conflicts where fences, rifles, ropes,

and the ankus have failed?

If elephants can survive only in

quasi-captivity, in limited numbers, in African

and Asian national parks, can they be educated

and acculturated to accept the equivalent, for

their species, of urban living?

Asian elephants, after all, have

learned to live in human urban situations for

many centuries. Though their adaptation is

imperfect, and they often get into trouble in

cities, the remarkable aspect may be that they

manage to live at all in crowded streets amid

unfamiliar humans and speeding cars.

If they can do that, can they learn to

teach themselves what they need to know to live

in relative freedom? --Merritt Clifton

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

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Fax: 360-579-2575

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Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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