Tano

On the spur of the moment I decided to adopt a baby elephant. Actually, I took out the adoption papers in my daughter’s name, so Tano (who will celebrate her first birthday in May) is technically and officially my daughter Olivia’s foster daughter, and my wife and I are, technically and officially, Tano’s foster grandparents.

She is adorable and spirited, and watching her romp in a mud bath with her 19 orphaned playmates, as I had a chance to do in Nairobi last week, you couldn't imagine the hell she’s been through.

Tano is one of the lucky baby elephants whose lives have been saved by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, which rescues baby elephants orphaned by poachers. Elephants are delicate creatures, and many of the orphaned babies die before they reach the age when they can be returned to life in the wild. But Tano looks like a good bet for survival. The Trust’s records contain the following entry about her:

“Tom Silvester, the Ranch Manager of Loisaba, rescued this tiny female who was only about 2 ½ months old. She had been located near ‘Boma Tano’ (the 5th Cattle Enclosure on the Ranch) and was suspected to be a poaching victim. The baby was too young to understand fear, and was trusting of humans from the start, instantly capturing the hearts of the Ranch Staff and the Manager’s children. They asked that she be named ‘Tano.’”

I visited the Sheldrick elephant orphanage last week during a business trip to Kenya and I was enormously impressed by the care and attention paid to these beautiful and intelligent animals. Dozens of Keepers tend to the elephants’ needs – feeding them a special, imported milk formula every three hours and even sleeping next to them at night. “No elephant is ever without a Keeper,” we were told. And the Keepers know the names and histories of every elephant in their care.

“That’s Turkwel over there,” the Trust’s spokeswoman told us. “A Park Warden risked his life by taking a team into a dangerous area around the South Turkana National Reserve, where warring tribes were constantly fighting over grazing lands for their livestock. With gunfire all around, he managed to get Turkwel safely to a landing strip and they flew him out to Nairobi.”

“And that’s Olare. A safari tourist in the Masai Mara spotted her clambering over her mother, who was stumbling, half paralyzed by a poacher’s bullet that had shattered her femur. Despite her excruciating pain, she struggled to protect her panic-stricken calf. Sadly, we had to euthenaze the mother, but we were able to save Olare.”

“And that’s little Shaba over there. He’s named for his homeland, the Shaba National Reserve in the northern part of the country. The drought has been tough on the local Samburu herdsmen who live there, and many of them have taken to grazing their cattle on the Reserve. Some of the tribesmen have also taken to poaching elephants in order to sell their ivory. Last September, a young schoolboy named Jacob noticed that a baby elephant, just days old, was trustingly following him as he walked home. The elders in his village alerted the Rangers, who called us. We were able to arrange a flight to rescue Shaba and bring him here the next day.”

And so it went. Story after story, and usually with a common thread: poachers killing elephants for their ivory, and calves, too young to have tusks of their own, left wandering in the bush. About half a million elephants remain in Africa, but conservationists estimate that poachers take the lives of as many as 60,000 of these extraordinary animals every year. Without restrictions on the ivory trade, they predict, African elephants could become extinct as early as 2020.

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a ban on the ivory trade in 1989, but granted permission to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan in 1997 and 2002, when African elephant populations appeared to have stabilized. Not surprisingly, the easing of restrictions on ivory sales resulted in a dramatic up-tick in poaching throughout Africa. As the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust note in their literature, “As long as there is a demand for ivory, and a legal market for it, the story will not end. But the existence of the elephants will.”

Tanzania and Zambia recently petitioned CITES to lift the ban on ivory sales once again, but just yesterday, at the CITES meeting in Doha, the Convention’s delegates – led by the US, the EU, and courageous conservationists in Kenya – voted against lifting the ban.

“It’s welcome news,” Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants told reporters. “But my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa.”

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust does great work. If you would like to adopt an elephant of your own, you can do so by visiting the Trust’s website: www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. A minimum donation of $50 will get you a “fostering certificate” with a profile and photograph of your adopted orphan, plus regular e-mail installments of a “Keeper’s Diary,” charting the progress of your baby elephant. Most important, you’ll have the satisfaction of helping save an endangered species. And speaking as Tano’s foster Grandpa, I can tell you, it’s a pretty good feeling.