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AFRICAN ELEPHANTS MYTHS & LEGENDS
In praise songs, the elephant gets a series of impressive titles: 'Animal of our Kings', 'Lord of the Trees', 'King of Creation', 'Master of the Valleys', and 'Servant of the Great Earth Mother'. There are many African legends about the time before people lived on earth, when all the animals lived together under one king - Elephant.
The stories all describe this time as one of peace, justice & prosperity.
There is a rich tradition of honouring the elephant in Africa. According to some traditions, elephants are reincarnations of Gods, who have been slain in the unseen land of the sky. Others believe that elephants live for hundreds of years and are reborn again and again in some magical way.
In Southern Africa there is told a tale of the girl who grew up so tall and fat that no man wanted her as his wife because she was accused of witchcraft. She was exiled from her village and wandered alone in the wilderness. There she met an elephant who began speaking to her politely in good Zulu. She agreed to stay with him and he helped her to find food in the forest. She gave birth to four human sons, all very tall and strong, who became the ancestors of the Ndlovu (Elephant) clan of paramount chiefs. Their praise name is 'Gatjeni', symbolising the uniting of the clan, just as an elephant gathers branches.
(to be continued.......)
ARTICLES
THE LUCRATIVE BUSINESS OF KILLING (SOUTH AFRICA)
The big black-maned lion saw the four hunters 100 metres away five seconds before the first bullet brought him down. Wounded, with a roar, he charged his tormentors, regardless of a fusillade of bullets from the four. He must have lost consciousness as he bowled over the first hunter, for he didn't attack, simply staggered to his feet and succumbed, as another six shots ripped into his body. The terrified hunters were vastly relieved to see their prone colleague was shaken, not injured and exchanged joyful high-fives over the body of a once-proud king of the jungle.
This advertisement under "lion hunts" on google for lion hunting goes under the caption: "deer hunting is for pussies; this is hunting at its most dangerous".
Prices for this pastime vary. One SA safari company charges $1 800-$2 500 a person a day for accommodation and, in addition, $21 000 for a lion, $10 000 for a buffalo, $5 500 for a hippo and $4 000 for a leopard. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) says trade in wild animals runs to billions of dollars annually. No-one has quantified hunting in SA but it is large.
Ethical hunters practice a "fair chase", where they follow their prey on foot on large tracts of land, where it can elude them. In SA, no hunting farm is so big that a fence is not a factor. To that extent, all lion hunting here is canned. But even ethical hunters think it's fair to put a wildebeest carcass out and wait in a hide for the big predators. On a canned hunting farm, a geriatric millionaire can drive right up to a drugged lion and dispatch it from behind the safety of a fence.
Chris Mercer of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting took his crusade to Parliament recently, telling MPs that SA has 5 000 lions in captive breeding facilities. Many are waiting to be shot by brave fellows with high-powered rifles and/or (perhaps worse) crossbows.
Hunters argue that dozens of game farms owe their existence to hunting - but what sort of life is it for the nervous and easily-traumatised animals occupying these ranches with gunfire around them all day?
Canned hunters claim they breed their own quarry but Mercer says there is no value in removing animals from their natural environment and breeding them as living targets. "Then you have a commercial farming operation. There is no point in boosting the numbers of these miserable prisoners."
A number of hunting concessions are right next to Kruger and other animal sanctuaries. Animals are sometimes driven out of reserves into hunting areas.
The number of lions in southern Africa has dropped from 50 000 to 15 000 in a decade. The population of African elephants has dropped from 2m in 1970 to less than 300 000 at the time of the ivory ban. Rhinos and leopards are desperately rare, yet are still offered to shooters.
Kenya has banned all hunting for 30 years and enjoys the highest wild animal population and the most successful wildlife tourist industry in Africa. Botswana has just banned the trophy hunting of lions.
Mercer says not much money from hunting goes to conservation. It goes mostly to the owners of the hunting ranches. Indeed, he thinks a lot of it stays offshore.
SA already has an unfortunate moral reputation. The Wild West has moved south. Mercer makes the point that our tourism business will evaporate if we get a reputation as a rogue nation practicing institutionalised cruelty to animals.
Source: Moneyweb, April 2007
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