Kin Under Skin : What elephants and humans have in common.

G.A. Bradshaw, 09.13.09, 12:01 AM EDT

Taken from : http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/12/science-elephants-humans-opinions-contributors-neurobiology.html

William is an executive at a Wall Street firm. He has three children, is on the arts board,

and is easily the club's best

tennis player. No one would guess that the pressed white shirt he wears every day hides cigarette burns and the ragged scars of abuse. William never knew a father's love or a secure home until his mother remarried. It was then he learned how to play tennis, laugh and watch television on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, a stepfather's arm around his shoulder and a mother's hand on his knee.

When William made partner, his wife booked him a ticket to Africa to celebrate his achievement. It was there he first met Kani. The safari guide had pointed out Kani in camp. Without words, there was a flash of recognition. Kani had also suffered as a child; he was orphaned after witnessing his family hacked to death by angry villagers. Fortunately, a loving family took him in. The first years were hard, but eventually he matured into an upstanding member of the community with children of his own.

Both William and Kani had brothers who were less fortunate. Brian and Mukiri never had the opportunity to heal from their violent wounds. Each grew up on his own, lacking the love and reassurance of a father figure who could guide him to manhood. At age 16, Brian was killed in a drug deal gone bad. At 14, Mukiri was gunned down by authorities.

Standing beside the Land Rover, William gazed out over the savannah at the awesome bulk of an African bull elephant. The giant, Kani, turned his head and the two locked eyes. “We survived,” they said. “We survived.”

***

An elephant's brain is nearly four times the size of a human's. The added volume affords elephants the prodigious memory needed to store a vast knowledge of elephant society and the complexities of African life. Elephant matriarchs recognize over 100 different relatives and friends, and when conditions are harsh, they can navigate scores of miles to lead their families safely to food and water.

Despite the difference in size, human and elephant brains are surprisingly similar. Neuroscience reveals there are no appreciable differences in brain structures and mechanisms between humans and other animals. Even birds, with evolutionary history that took a separate path, have brain functions and capacities convergent with their mammalian counterparts.

This cerebral overlap accounts for the similarities between William and Kani. Though man and elephant grew up in different skins and on different continents, they share similar stories and endings because of a common neurobiology. Brain science also explains why they became who they are today and their brothers did not. Mental receptivity and brain plasticity endow the elephant matriarch with wisdom--and allow human children to learn Japanese, Swahili and English simultaneously while adults stumble through their menus in Paris, trying to recall college French. Sadly, it is the same plasticity that makes humans and elephants vulnerable to suffering. Abuse and neglect leave enduring scars. What we experience in the outside world penetrates deep inside, even to the point of turning genes on and off.

Traumatic memories persist, but wrongs can be righted with love. For William, it came in the form of a stepfather he could trust. For lucky orphans like Kani, it is the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, outside Nairobi. There, from infancy to teenhood, orphaned elephants are nurtured and taught elephant ways and values by caregiving African men so that they are able to rejoin their pachyderm kin in the wild expanses of Kenya.

Science increasingly reveals that nature has a face. The stories of William and Kani suggest that what we do and how we treat each other can leave a long-lasting legacy on the neurons and synapses of the brain. A polar bear drowning in Arctic waters, a parrot alone in a metal cage and a child abandoned are variations on the same theme. Saving the elephant or the whale is a way to save ourselves and our children. We are kin under skin.

G.A. Bradshaw, Ph.D., is director of the Kerulos Center and the author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity, to be published Oct. 6, 2009 by Yale University Press

Culling 'a last resort' in Ezemvelo's elephant control plans

Mercury: September 16, 2009 Edition 1

Tony Carnie

EZEMVELO KZN Wildlife has become the first conservation agency to submit new elephant management plans - including the option of culling elephants at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, Tembe, Isimangaliso and Ithala game reserves.

But Ezemvelo says no culling is on the cards yet as other methods of limiting elephant populations are being tested, including contraception at Tembe Elephant Park on the Mozambique border.

South Africa has more than 17 000 elephants in 80 national, provincial and private reserves. Most are in the Kruger National Park, which suspended culling 14 years ago.

A new elephant management policy was finalised last year and included the resumption of culling as a last option.

Responding to recent questions from DA environment spokesman Gareth Morgan, the national Environmental Affairs Department said no elephants had been culled since the new policy came into force in January last year.

Environment affairs director-general Nosipho Ngcaba confirmed that Ezemvelo had submitted management plans to the department for the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, Isimangaliso, Ithala and Tembe reserves, and that they provided for culling.

She said, however, that the new policy stipulated that culling would be approved only as a last resort.

With the exception of a small herd on the border with Mozambique, elephants were wiped out in KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1900s.

More than 200 elephants were reintroduced to KZN's parks from 1981 to 1994. From a founder population of 160 orphans, the number in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park has grown to about 470. Tembe Elephant Park now has 270 elephants, Ithala about 110, Isimangaliso (St Lucia) 60 and Mkhuze about 50.

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Gambia: Thirteen Wild Animal Species Extinct

The Daily Observer (Banjul)

Gambia: Thirteen Wild Animal Species Extinct -Minister Cham

Hatab Fadera

14 September 2009

Banjul — Momodou Kotu Cham, the minister of Forestry and the Environment, last Thursday, informed members of the National Assembly that 13 species of wild animals have gone extinct. Among them, he said, include elephant, giraffe and lion.

Minister Cham was responding to a question posed to him by the National Assembly member for Banjul South, Honourable Baboucarr S Nyang, who wanted to know the reason behind the extinction of wild animals in the country, especially in regions such as the Central and Upper River Region, which he said, were in the past endowed with lots of animals.

The Forestry and Environment minister said as in all other natural processes, extinction could be both natural and human driven. For most of the wild animals of The Gambia, he said, the major cause of extinction has been loss of habitat by basically human beings. "To a large extent, our human population has been responsible for the extinction of a large number of wild animals because as the population increases, so is its demand on land to settle, to cultivate, and indeed to conduct all other human development needs," he said.

He then went on to inform the members that species like the elephant and lion need hundreds of kilometres of land as their home range. But as their habitat gets destroyed as a result of human activities, he said, these wild animals that require large home ranges are forced to migrate, or get killed, and eventually go extinct.

Reintroduction of some species

Also responding to a related question from the same NAM, on whether there are plans or programmes geared towards re-populating some of the designated national parks with animals such as leopard, antelopes, bucks, and cheetah amongst others, the Forestry and Environment minister told deputies about plans to re-introduce certain species of these animals into some of the nature reserves and parks. "But it must be noted that reintroduction has both technical and financial implications. Game reserves for viewing, and nature tourism including safaris could become an additional high class tourism product for the country, and at the same time enhance and increase the value of wild species," stated Minister Cham.

This, he told members is the reason why the government has invited the private sector, both Gambian and foreign to invest in the parks since the private sector could provide both technical and financial requirements. "As I speak, we are studying several requests from some investors who have expressed interest," concluded the Forestry and Environment minister.

‘Mabunda smear tactics a low blow’ (Sunday Independent 6 September 2009)

Animal Rights Africa (ARA) is dismayed at the unwarranted attack on ARA by SANParks CEO, Dr David Mabunda in his opinion piece, Anti-hunting groups have misfired, Sunday Independent, 30 August 2009. But clearly, in our dedication to ending the unnecessary suffering of oppressed and exploited sentient beings, and to the total liberation of human animals, nonhuman animals, and the Earth, ARA has struck a raw nerve.

Let us start with Dr Mabunda’s simplistic and patent attempt to side-line and discredit ARA. By implying that ARA is part of some kind of international illuminati-type conspiracy from the North, Dr Mabunda makes use of apartheid-style smear tactics, a-la-PW Botha. Why is it so difficult for Dr Mabunda to accept that ARA is a “proudly South African” initiative that is simply part of a global trend towards the expansion of justice and respect for all animals (humans included)?

The liberation struggle in South Africa was part of a global momentum towards recognizing the dignity and integrity of oppressed people the world over. Why are the same principles, when applied to the animal liberation struggle, so difficult for him to comprehend? It is clear that Dr Mabunda has not bothered to understand what the guiding principles of the animal liberation and animal rights movement are. It is therefore absurd and disingenuous in the extreme that he tries to link our movement to colonialism and imperialism.

We are a new global breed of activism and we are part of the new social movements: seeking new relations with the natural world and an end of hierarchies. As a South African advocacy and campaigning organization that is trying to contribute to policy debates and formulation in relation to wildlife, ARA obviously welcomes robust engagement, but Dr Mabunda’s vitriolic response is worrying because at its core it damages constitutional democracy in South Africa.

By striking out at NGOs like ARA he is showing unacceptable intolerance for those that he perceives as not totally in support of SANParks – the kind of censoring “if you are not with us you are against us” position. Not everything can and should be State-driven. By taking such an intolerant stand Dr Mabunda is directly making a cynical and comprehensive attack on the rights of civil society to legitimately organize themselves.

The irony is that it is current government neoliberal conservation policies which are reproductions of old colonial economic logic where the unfettered exploitation of natural and human resources was (and is) the norm. So it does not surprise us that in South Africa it is pro-utilization lobby organisations, donors, individuals and governments from the North that rule the roost and with whom government conservation agencies partner with.

Along with Dr Mabunda, members of the IUCN and other aligned organisations are largely proponents of so-called “wise use” interest groups, the very antithesis of “progressive conservation”. Rather than consider the sustainability of wildlife and ecosystems, wise-use emphasizes sustaining the maximum human consumptive use of the animals and the environment.

Dr Mabunda’s unwarranted swipe at Kenya and its wildlife policies, which he says have been hijacked by animal rights and welfare NGOs is patronising and dismissive of Kenya’s sovereignty. It is far-fetched to claim, as he does, that animal rights and welfare NGOs have the financial and political clout to influence the views of Kenyans on such a grand scale. Kenya will no doubt reply to this poisonous allegation itself. But, let us be clear, through a consultative process, it is the majority of communities living with wildlife in Kenya who are overwhelmingly opposed to the resumption of trophy hunting , believe that it will negate conservation and provide even fewer returns for local communities in wildlife areas. The fact that Kenyans seem to be weighing up the arguments and then choosing to take a more measured and respectful is laudable. It is Kenya who leads the fight at every CITES meeting against countries, such as South Africa and Namibia, and “wise use” lobby groups, that are trying to weaken protection at CITES meetings and who push trophy hunting and the trade in wildlife as the panacea for protecting wildlife. Is this the real reason why Dr Mabunda is so keen to misrepresent Kenya?

ARA will continue to positively contribute and push for vigorous public debate and policy change that will build our growing democracy and not stifle it, and we can only hope that SANParks will be gracious enough to accept that.

Michele Pickover (Coordinator: Animal Rights Africa)

IN THE PRESS (Week of 6 September 2009)

Click on the news article that interests you.

Number of slaughtered white rhinos in Kruger up to 33
Click HERE to read more.

Bolivia bans all circus animals
Click HERE to read more.
or
Click HERE to read more.

Farm dumps 'economically worthless' male chicks
Click HERE to read more.

Animal cruelty charges for ex-agriculture MEC
Click HERE to read more.

Claims of monkey business in baboon contract
Click HERE to read more.

Rhino horns give the game away
Click HERE to read more.

Leopard skin haul case is delayed yet again
Click HERE to read more.

46 Black rhinos moved to safer areas in Zimbabwe
Click HERE to read more.

Six critically endangered western lowland gorilla orphans released onto an island
Click HERE to read more.

Congo’s wildlife rangers launch offensive against armed groups trafficking charcoal in gorilla zone of Virunga
Click HERE to read more.

Amboseli elephants dying in worst drought for 50 years
Click HERE to read more.

Brutal Namibian seal hunt caught on film – Journalists attacked
Click HERE to read more.

Big cat hunting has disproportionate affect on populations
Click HERE to read more.