It didn’t hit me until two weeks ago when Maria and I met my granddaughter at the Bronk Zoo. I took Emma there many times when she was very young, and it is special to me. But until I stood in front of the old Elephant House and looked up at that beautiful statuary over the doors, I hadn’t remembered my own visit when I was a very small child.
It was my first visit to the Bronx Zoo and when I looked up at the marble elephant, it came back to me. I stood at that very spot more than half a century ago and looked up in wonder at that statue.
I have always loved elephants and never missed a chance to see one. That is almost impossible now. There is one elephant in the Bronx Zoo, the others all gone.
Many elephants have already died, the hundreds of elephants who had good jobs and long lives in zoos had nowhere else to go, it costs nearly $700 a day to feed and care for them.
Their natural habitats are besieged by the poverty of countries, the slaughter of elephants by poachers, and the destruction of their natural environments by climate challenge and the ravages of human developers.
In our mob-like rush to see them all as abused, we have managed to kill hundreds of them and endanger their species, and to make sure our children never see them again off of a screen.
All of this has made me think long and hard about what the rights of animals are.
We are so busy protecting them from being safe with humans we have utterly failed to keep them alive and on the earth. We will be judged as the generation that permitted countless species of animals to be destroyed, I am as complicit as anyone else, I have no idea how to stop it.
Rescuing dogs and cats and chasing carriage horses out of Central Park won’t do it, I’m afraid. Sixty per cent of all the animal populations in the world have been wiped out since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Federation.
There are no elephants in the Elephant Building at the Bronx Zoo, one left and somewhere in Asia land. The zoos, the last redoubt of the largely domesticated Asian elephants, are all under great pressure from animal rights groups to get rid of their elephants as well as the circuses.
The Bronx Zoo, praised by zoologists all over the world, have been targeted for some time by animal rights groups claiming they were abusing their elephants.
Soon – very soon – they will all be gone.
My idea about animals is oddly radical: it is to fight to keep them among us, not ever to take them away. Once they leave, they are gone forever, a terrible mistake that can never be undone.
My idea is to treat them well and give them all of the work we can find for them – gi rides to kids, driving people around parks, sustainable taxis, therapy animals, delivering fruit and vegetables, supporting humane and forward-looking zoos.
This is a lot better than the alternative, starving them and pushing them out of their habitats or murdering them outright for their tusks and fur. We should never help them to leave our world, we should always help them to stay.
We need a wiser and more mystical way of thinking about animals.
They have always been our partners in the world, not some persecuted beings in need of being forced out of human contact and onto “preserves,” or deprived of the work and contact with humans that could keep them alive and give people a strong motive for saving them.
Rather than push them away from us, we need them to live amongst us whenever possible. Knowing them and needing them – just think of dogs and cats – is the best possible protection.
Dogs have flourished because we have kept them close to us, and gotten to know and love them. Elephants and horses have formed similar attachments to humans, although they are being pushed away from us and out of sight by people who claim to speak for the rights of animals.
Dogs do not deserve to languish for years in crates in “no-kill” shelters.
There are lots of poor people and older people and working people without big fences who would love to have them and love them. We should not be making it difficult to adopt homeless dogs and cats, we should make it as easy and as safe as possible.
My belief, for whatever it’s worth, is that the most elemental right of animals is to survive, to remain in our world while we figure out how to live with them humanely and safely. That is not the stated goal of any animal rights group that I know of.
For that to happen, people like me, and perhaps you, will have to come to a completely different understanding of what animal rights really are.
I am so grateful that I got to see real elephants in their glory and grandeur and wondrous ability to love people. I am grateful that I didn’t have to stand before a stone statue at my age and wonder what they are really like, and why there are no elephants in the zoos.
It is amazing that memories can surface years later like your memory of being there as a small child.
I too worry about animals or birds becoming extinct because we are destroying their habitat by building on every piece of land that is not already built upon. Like you said, once they are gone, it cannot be undone.
Humans can be the worst kind of animals. We think we are so superior to our counterparts on four legs. But we have only served to kill off so many beautiful animals in this world with our so called “progress”..there needs to be a balance of respect, yes people need places to live..but does it give us the right to move animals out of their habitats to starve or die somewhere else? I am not an animals rights activist..they are not truly for animals, they are just activists that have glommed onto animals instead of some other political element. I do not like circuses for our entertainment particularly, but I do think well run zoos and parks allow people/children to experience animals they might never ever see in their lives. To appreciate the beauty and the need to keep these animals alive..because as you said, once they are gone, they are gone forever! I have no idea how to make that change either ( not in my lifetime) but perhaps by spreading the word on SM is a start..If PETA can fill our inboxes with their rubbish, then surely we can use a media platform just to talk about the need to keep animals on this planet, not solicit like PETA, but just sharing..your blog is a start!