THE chilling presence of evil quickens the human pulse as the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons blasts the silence and echoes and reechoes in the distance. It is too far to hear the victims stumbling and falling to the ground and to see them writhe in their death throes in the dust. Walk over and count the dead. There are hundreds, possibly 300, here.

The executioners have gone away. They had no intention of burying the dead. The innocent victims, stripped of their material wealth, are left where they fell to rot in the sun or to be eaten by scavengers. One look at the carnage is a graphic reminder of the perils and the increasing wanton slaughter that faces victims carrying articles of great worth but with inadequate means of protection and virtually no place to hide.

Multiply this scene by thousands. Count the total dead by tens of thousands. And only then can you begin to get a true picture of the ruthless slaughter by which the once great elephant herds of Africa are being decimated. Today, they are being killed faster than they can reproduce, and there are strong fears that soon they will go the way of the buffalo that once roamed the American plains in vast numbers, only to be massacred by man almost to extinction.

The great elephants have given their lives for humans who have an eye for the exotic. Expensive ivory carvings that range from several feet high to the size of a thimble are in popular demand by those who can afford them. Twenty years ago the price of ivory was about three dollars a pound. Today it commands a huge $40 price tag. It has been estimated that 2,300 elephants lost their lives to supply the 8.3 million dollars’ worth of ivory imported into the United States in 1980 alone.

An elephant poacher with the slightest knowledge of mathematics knows that his prey, bearing, say, two 100-pound (45-kg) tusks, could bring him at least $8,000 on the ivory market. In Tanzania police confiscated a cache of tusks valued at $360,000, the result of poachers at work. The crackdown by game wardens and rangers in some African countries has resulted in a number of deaths of both poachers and rangers. “It’s like a war,” said one warden. But with the inflated prices paid for ivory tusks, the poachers are willing to take the chance. Even some game rangers have turned rebel to the cause and joined the poachers. The kill of just one large tusk-bearing elephant could equal more than a year’s salary for a ranger.

Those with an eye for the exotic do not necessarily stop with the ivory carvings. They may be willing to pay $400 for a briefcase made of elephant hide or to buy a wastebasket or an umbrella stand made from its feet and legs. A pencil holder made from the feet of a mere baby elephant may strike their fancy. A man may like the idea of having a wallet made of elephant hide, and a woman may like to show off her elephant-hide purse or belt. But have they considered that an elephant gave its life so that they could have something unusual?

So insensible have the poachers become to the wanton slaughter of these animals that in some countries water holes, used not only by the elephants but by other animals as well, are being poisoned. By poison spears, by poison fruit, by darts, pitfalls and fire, and by automatic weapons, the defenseless elephant falls easy prey to those who have but one intent: kill! And kill they do, in East Africa up to 70,000 elephants a year.

Not long ago the country of Uganda boasted 49,000 elephants. Soldiers in the army of the then president, Idi Amin, turned part-time poachers and systematically gunned the elephants down by the thousands, hacking out their tusks and leaving them to rot where they fell. Park rangers once counted 900 carcasses in just one area.

Amin’s government was overthrown in 1979, but, unfortunately, the elephants of Uganda were not to breathe a sigh of relief. Today, the weapons from Amin’s army​—either abandoned by fleeing soldiers or confiscated—​are prized possessions in the hands of poachers. With them the poachers can methodically kill anything that moves and offers a cash return. Today, the head count of elephants left in Uganda stands at about 1,500.

When will the slaughter end? As long as there is a demand from couldn’t-care-less consumers it is hard to see how the extinction of the wild elephant in Africa can be avoided.

[Blurb on page 5]

The once great elephant herds of Africa are being killed faster than they can reproduce