Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.’ Is this the requiem for the great African elephant? A proposal to save them.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. The terrible news is just in from Johannesburg, and it could hardly be worse. The fate of one of the world’s most majestic creatures is being determined now… now at this very minute… and the forces charged with the task of protecting the last of the once-great herd located in Cameroon are losing….
It is a vision of hell, the ill-prepared and lackadaisical soldiers of Cameroon out gunned, out classed, out maneuvered by marauding horsemen, poachers believed to have originated in Sudan. Fast-riding, determined they have forged a sickening scene of the Apocalypse…
The soldiers fall back and back again, as the fiendish purveyors of death advance, the more determined as the number of elephants falls, the very closeness of their extinction driving their nemeses to greater risk and purpose. The elephants maddened by the blood and carcasses of their fallen comrades rend the air with their terrible cries of pain and fear. They know what is happening and shriek against the failing of the light.
Yet still the fearful highwaymen advance…  determined on their dreadful work, shaming we so-called civilized men who prate, consider, and endlessly discuss this pressing matter but do so little so late to avert the monumental tragedy occurring now, this very day, in the land called Cameroon.
For the incidental music to this fateful story of greed, mayhem, and looming catastrophe I have selected the music of 19th century Italian master Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886) specifically his “Dance of the Hours.” First performed in 1876, it was revised in 1880. The dance is intended to symbolize the eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness.
Of all the lyric melodies of this prolific maestro, this is his most well known composition, virtually every note instantly recognizable. It was popular from the moment it was released as part of the opera “La Gioconda”. But became immortal in 1940 when Walt Disney included it in the animated film masterpiece “Fantasia.” Whilst the ballet was fully rendered there, its place in the original opera was not. There the ballet appears at the end of the third act, where the character Alvise, who heads the Inquisition, receives his guests in a large and elegant ballroom adjoining the death chamber.
There could hardly be a more apt image for what is happening to real elephants this very day… for while we amuse ourselves, they die, their putrid, stinking remains a charnel house of horror and disgust… far from the dancing elephants in pink slippers portrayed through the animation of Disney. Go now to any search engine and listen to Ponchielli and his sounds of the passing hours, the last hours on Earth of a creature we say we revere and cherish… but have so completely and irrevocably failed.
The Facts.
March 15, 2012 World Wildlife Fund, the world’s largest conservation organization, released the latest and most alarming statement in a long chain of such statements concerning the situation regarding the fast dwindling population of African elephants. The statement was issued by Natasha Kofoworola Quist, WWF’s Central African Regional Programme Office Representative. Its important contents are of the most sobering kind.
Approximately two weeks ago in response to escalating, emboldened poacher activity, the Cameroon government authorized a military intervention at the site of the slaughter of hundreds of unprotected elephants. Despite this intervention, in which at least one soldier has already died, poaching continues unabated in Bouba N’Djida National Park.
Predictably in this unmitigated fiasco, these forces were unprepared for their work, came too late, and were the very model of ineptitude. WWF estimates that fully one half the herd was butchered before their “deliverers” arrived… with the holocaust only worsening upon their arrival.
So apprised, WWF approached his excellency of Cameroon, president Paul Biya with undeniable facts, data, photos… and a plea for concerted action, concrete assurances that he would take the necessary steps to avert a great calamity, an indelible stain on him, his administration and his ineffectual promises, akin to the emperor Nero fiddling whilst Rome burned.
But if this missive, this delegation, this clear rendering of what is happening and what must be done at once is like the missives, delegations, and clear renderings gone before, why then this once mighty and flourishing herd is as good as dead and gone forever.
Still WWF has performed, in its latest exhortation to Biya, what it is positioned to do, strenuously urging protection of the elephants, the capture and detention of those violating Cameroon’s territorial integrity with deadly weapons, and the imposition of the most severe sentences against them for the death of elephants and the ruthless harvest of their ivory. No doubt his excellency will take it all under advisement as he and his predecessors have all done before…
… and so the elephants will be exterminated, shot by point-blank shot, and even faster now that their certain end is nigh.
Immediate, aggressive, international pressure.
What do we need then? What we have needed from the beginning. For all its good work, WWF can only advise… and this is not enough. The great nations of this planet must intervene and at once, make plain their adamant opposition to the status quo, and cut the deal that must be cut with the current authorities in Yaounde. They who care so little about elephants and their future will care more, and promptly, if we make it worth their while.
Thus, my modest proposal. Send U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon Robert Jackson to see President Biya along with his fellow ambassadors from England, France, Germany et al. Flesh out the contours of the deal, the deal that will save Biya’s face — and the elephants. Then send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to sign it and take the necessary photos, whilst privately admonishing Biya that this time, at long last, we civilized folk mean business. Clinton can do this; she’s an experienced politician, a practised deal maker and here she can make the necessary difference.
Now it’s your turn.
The African elephant is near the irreversible tipping point, that crucial moment when it will be too late to save them. What is happening now in Cameroon has considerably advanced this lamentable outcome. Every entity, governmental, political, charitable, which might have helped has, for whatever reason, failed, thereby hastening the end of the greatest of animals.
Now, therefore, it falls to us, the people of this Planet, to take action. Send a letter to Secretary Clinton, send this article. Write simply and powerfully: “You know what to do. Do it!” And do it now, for every second  is precious if we are to save the life of this great creature now passing into eternity. For if you do not, there will come the day, and far too soon, when only Disney’s dancing elephants in pink slippers will remain, to the abiding shame and regret of our ruthless, careless species which is entirely responsible for this result and the terrible void impending.