Kruger National Park is home to 13,000+ elephants, slightly more than Gonarenzhou in Zimbabwe and many more than Gorongosa in Mozambique. The Kruger animals have been protected here for nearly 100 years with varying degrees of success. Different ideas and schemes of managing the elephants have come and gone in that time frame – some decent, some hideous.  Today the best science is being brought to bear; it can be hoped that the future will be bright for Kruger’s elephants and that the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park is successful in letting the herds have the room they need to roam. Many people are working on this polarizing issue.

At Letaba Camp there is an Elephant Museum, home to the Magnificent Seven. I cannot describe what it was like to wander into that building and stand before a set of tusks that reached far above me and dropped all the way to the floor. The tusks displayed here are so jaw-dropping enormous you can’t believe they are real. Each set of tusks comes with the story of its elephant, and most of the stories are of a long, natural life. Elephants can only live around 60 years before their teeth wear out and they cannot feed, and so they pass away. The lucky ones, anyway. Others meet a different fate.

Killing elephants for their ivory is nothing new. The Arabs and the Orientals have coveted ivory for thousands of years and it is easy to see why. Ivory is more beautiful than gold. Touching it, carving it into trinkets, wearing jewelry made of it – yes, I can understand the obsession. I am obsessed with ivory as well but only worn on the beasts that create it for their own use. In the presence of the Magnificent Seven, marveling at the time-worn smoothness, the damaged areas, the rich colors – I want to drop to my knees and beg that not one more elephant will be killed for its tusks. But the slaughter goes on. The money is too good. Don’t for a moment think that anything redeeming comes from the killing. There is nothing remotely resembling a benefit to society being created with this blood money. Tusks buy guns, and power. Guns kill elephants, and people. End of story.

Now imagine this – what if, every time an elephant is murdered for its tusks, what if all of the pain and horror and desperation and suffering were transferred to the tusks? And what if then every single person who handled the tusks were cursed with those emotions, had to feel them every day? What if the despicable person who ends up owning something from the brutalized animal, what if every time they touched it, or showed it off to their friends, or admired it, what if all they would feel was the horror? Would that it could be true. I borrowed this fantasy from a chapter in Arthur C. Clarke’s story “Childhood’s End.” It is only a fantasy.