Dublin Zoo's elephants are currently enjoying an imaginative new enclosure, designed to provide this fledging herd with a sense of natural habitat at a time when its native one is being destroyed. But though the Asian elephant must contend with habitat loss, the African elephant has an even deadlier problem, writes Eileen Battersby.
Rasping shrieks from the imperious peacock act as an introduction of sorts. He is well accustomed to being praised for his theatrical beauty. In fact, he expects it. But today, it is different. Trailing his long tail with its skirt of eyes behind him, he seems even more impatient than usual. The half-hearted sun reflects off his shimmering blue plumage as he paces about, gathering followers, indifferent for once to admirers, and appears to act as a self-appointed master of ceremonies. The sound of rushing water becomes louder and you become aware that it is a waterfall. The vibrant, pounding splinters, cracking off the rocks, sets the scene.
This is the beginning of the meandering trail, flanked on one side by a busy stream. The young bamboo trees hint at the forest that will one day stand here. Now it is new-garden tender, bright green, graceful in the breeze, but it will in time become dense and the careful planting will appear more random, more natural. Earthen mud banks create the impression of a series of low cliffs and rock faces with veins of vegetation. Suddenly, what had looked like a slight ripple on the surface of a pool acquires a life of its own. The movement gathers energy and a slick shape emerges from the water. The youngster who has been amusing herself playing hide and seek now wants some attention. An aquatic performance begins. It's not exactly Olympic class, but it's pretty good for a four year old and to the besotted baby looking on, it amounts to a miracle.
Mother is in a dream world, gazing at nothing in particular, her expression, ancient and soulful, suggests a benign contentment, albeit one qualified by the burden of history. Tolerant of the hooded crow hovering at her shoulder, she may not have even noticed it. The baby's aunt, mother to the swimmer, remains watchful. This all-female family unit has no fears; there is no search for food or water, and no apparent threat of attack. But the presence of a relative new-born, an infant of seven weeks, ensures that both adult females will respond to the slightest sound or sudden movement.
The youngster makes a bid for the shore. Her back is dark from the water, the hair is soaked. She remembers how much she likes eating and heads for mother. The family, enjoying its afternoon, pause as one for a dust bath, and sand is tossed in the air like so much confetti. For a split second all four survey the audience with limited interest. A woman's Donegal accent rises above the babble gathered on the other side of the stream. "It's great to see the elephants back in Dublin Zoo," she says and an older man agrees, "I haven't been here since they left. I'm only making my zoo comeback because of them."
It is true, no matter how intense one tries to imagine that this domestic scene is unfolding in a clearing in an Asian rainforest, it is not a forest clearing. But it is an imaginative, man-made enclosure, designed to provide this fledging herd of Asian elephants with a sense of a natural habitat at a time when natural native habitat is being destroyed throughout Asia.
Although not given to playing to the gallery, elephants, the largest land mammal and an endangered species, are always a main attraction - their size, their calm, their tactile attitude to each other, their bizarre grace, and that slow, deliberate way approach they have to the business of living. For these particular Asian elephants, Elephas maximus, humans are no novelty. The two adult females, sisters, were bred in The Netherlands, in Rotterdam Zoo, as was the four year old, daughter of the smaller female, who is also currently pregnant and due to calf next year. The baby is the first elephant to be born in Ireland.
Humans can relate to elephants, whose lifespan is equal to man's three score and ten. Like man, elephants tend to their young for several years, and elephants, unlike other animals, enjoy a lengthy childhood, only reaching sexual maturity at 14. There is also an awareness of hierarchy. Female family members stay together for life - as this Dublin Zoo herd will.
US writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen, who counts watching elephants as one of life's privileges, once observed "Elephants travel in matriarchal groups led by a succession of mothers and daughters - female elephants stay with their mothers all their lives - and this group may include young males which have not yet been driven off . . . Ordinarily the leader is the oldest cow, who is related to every other animal; she may be 50 years old and past the breeding age, but her great memory and experience is the herd's defense against drought and flood and man. She knows not only where good browse may be found in different seasons, but when to charge and when to flee, and it is to her that the herd turns to in times of stress. When a cow is in season, bulls may join the cow-calf group; at other times, they live alone or in herds of bachelors . . ." (from The Tree Where Man Was Born, 1972). Matthiessen has a store of elephant tales, many of them sad.
The larger of the Dublin elephants, Bernhadine, "Dina" to the keepers, possesses abundant presence. She is 23 years old, and although prone to "weaving" or swaying from side to side like a stabled horse, is a matriarch in the making. In the wild, she would get to know every trail, every village, every watering hole. In Dublin she can concentrate on discipline and mothering. The new baby is her third calf, having lost one calf at birth and another to illness after just over a year. Yasmin, Dina's sister, is slightly smaller and seven years younger. The two, by the same parents, have been together all their lives.
When Yasmin gave birth to Anka, just over four years ago, a family group was formed. This has been further consolidated by the birth in the zoo's elephant house on May 7th, at 2.39am, of the new baby, who had been due on April 1st. This extra month extended the usual gestation period of 22 months. Asian elephants, at between 3,000-5,000 kilos are physically smaller than their African counterparts, Loxodonta africana (4,000-7,000 kilos). The Asian elephants are smoother-skinned and have smaller ears. Their heads are compressed with bulges, bumps and a dished forehead. Their single-fingered trunks are more rigid, and whereas both male and female African elephants have tusks, only the Asian male does.
While it must be conceded that the magnificent African elephant is far more beautiful, the Asian is believed to be more intelligent, versatile, easier to train, was an effective, sure-footed soldier - although Hannibal used African war elephants, experiencing defeat only when faced by Scipio's superior tactics - and is a good worker, greatly valued in its native areas and described as recently as 1963 in the Burma Daily News as a "self-regenerating, heavy duty machine of great strength and the delicate sensitiveness of a ballet dancer".
According to 1999 figures compiled by the Asian Elephant Specialist Group Action Plan, more than 13,000 elephants are at work in Asian countries including India, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. It is cruelly ironic that elephants have been particularly effective when used for forest clearance which causes the destruction of their habitat.
Although baby elephants are vulnerable, elephants have few enemies. No animal, apart from man, is going to challenge an elephant. The greatest threat, aside from ivory poachers, trophy hunters and drought, is the destruction of habitat.
On a summer's day, the Dublin family is happy. Zoos remain an emotive subject; people either love them or hate them. Even when they are as impressive and as animal-aware as Dublin, there is always a lurking ambivalence at engaging in voyeurism. Yet the privilege outweighs the doubts. We owe a massive debt to the wildlife documentary film-making of pioneering educators such as David Attenborough. The reality is that more and more zoo animals have been bred in captivity.
Gone are the days when a bewildered animal looked out from behind bars and wondered at the freedom it used to enjoy. Today's zoo animal lives the life of the domestic pet, albeit one with more respect, less emotional demands, more routine, more sophisticated behavioural monitoring and better veterinary care.
The biggest journey these Dublin-based Asian elephants will ever make is from The Netherlands to Ireland. Their enclosure, complete with sand runs and clearings, coves and pools, amounts to a giant playground, complete with hay nets suspended from trees and tall poles. The spring pool in which Anka was swimming (she later swam in the other one as well) is one of two man-made ponds.
When a bull is eventually introduced here it will be possible to separate him when necessary without denying him access to the pool. At other times he will run with the females. Water is vital for elephants - aside from the social and recreational aspect of any watering hole, there is water as a life force. An elephant may drink between 100 and 200 litres a day. The trunk of an adult is capable of holding eight and a half litres.
Watching them relax outside in the holiday atmosphere is very different from the setting as it was only a few months ago. On a cold early March Saturday, this enclosure looked like a building site, complete with a complex drainage system that is now sustaining the waterfall, stream and pools. On that day, the elephants had already been out for their exercise and had returned to the elephant house, itself a large indoor arena, maintained like a large stable with regular mucking out - they are grazers and, in common with horses, produce a lot of droppings in the course of a day. Bernhadine was then enormously pregnant and was busily dealing with the constant supply of food. Would she give birth before April 1st? Well now we know she didn't.
Elephants are kindly and non-aggressive but they are also potentially dangerous at close quarters, especially when young are involved, and possess deadly strength. Even a casual swiping blow from their trunk could kill. The grip of that trunk is lethal. Keepers must be on guard, and more have been killed, by being trampled or crushed by elephants, in zoos across the world than by any other animal, the big cats included. I held Yasmin's foot through one of the gate openings and can still remember the sheer weight of it, as well as the softness of the skin on her leg.
The keepers follow a routine of educating by touch, voice command and reward. It stimulates the animals and creates a rapport without forcing a false bond. The elephants bed down at night in a group. The film of the recent birth shows how close the family unit is.
Flash back further still a few months and it is late October 2006. The elephants arrive at Dublin docks in large containers. Driving through wet streets, many a late-night commuter or bored taxi driver might have perked up at the idea of being stopped at the lights alongside a truck carrying an elephant mother and child. The European and international zoo network is exciting, and appears to operate with unusual amounts of co-operation and good will. The breeding programmes are decided by species stud books, which are as detailed as those used in breeding thoroughbred horses.
Yet even while the little girl last week in Dublin Zoo waved her Baby Dumbo soft toy straight from Disneyland Paris at the elephants, directing the Dublin baby "look at my baby, look at my baby", there is the ugly ongoing reality of the international plight of elephants, particularly in Africa.
Destruction of habitat is an irreversible tragedy; being slaughtered for ivory amounts to a disgusting outrage, and not only for its brutality. The poachers themselves, who will literally hack the face of an elephant and inflict horrific deaths on the animals, are on the lowest rung of the supply network and are in turn exploited by their clients. In Kenya nowadays, it is openly admitted that a live elephant is worth more than a dead one - if only because tourism is Kenya's biggest export.
The Asian elephant must contend with habitat loss, but the African has an even deadlier problem. In 1980 an estimated one million elephants roamed Africa. Within 10 years, poachers meeting the demands of the international ivory market had reduced the population by half. On June 4th 1989, US President George Bush Sr ordered an immediate ban on all imports of African elephant ivory into the US. It was the first major step in an international campaign. The European Union followed within days and some three months later, Japan also banned ivory imports. Yet the slaughter continues.
National Geographic highlighted the continuing horror in a brave article that was sufficiently graphic in its reportage to cause some readers to object. In "Defending A Forgotten Herd", published in the March issue, conservationist J Michael Fay reported on the situation in Chad in Central Africa and the armed protection being given by mounted rangers to elephants wandering beyond the perimeters of Kakouma National Park. It makes for unsettling reading. "The dead elephant, a huge bull, lay on his side, right leg curled as if in wrenching pain. Dirt covered the exposed eye - magic done by poachers to hide the carcass from vultures. The smell of musth (sic) and urine, of fresh death, hung over the mound of the corpse. It was a sight I had seen hundreds of times in central Africa . . . Deep fissures ran like rivers through the soles of his feet; in those lines, I could trace every step he had taken during his 30 years of life."
It is a powerful opening paragraph, preceded as it is by a selection of contrasting photographs. Some are beautiful social studies of large herds worthy of Stubbs, others are shocking indictments of human greed. "This elephant's ancestors", continues Fay, "had survived centuries of raiding by the armies of Arab and African sultans from the north in search of slaves and ivory. He had lived through civil wars and droughts, only to be killed today for a few pounds of ivory to satisfy human vanity in some distant land."
The national park is small, less than 1,200 square miles. Each year "as the dry season relaxes its grip" some 3,500 elephants leave the park in search of better forage. This is one of the things the elephant must battle, its own tendency because of its size to exhaust territory and the constant need to be on the move to find more.
Beyond the park, in an area spanning southern Sudan, southeastern Chad and the eastern Central Republic down to the Congo forests, are poachers. There were an estimated 300,000 elephants in the early 1970s. About 10,000 remain. The statistics make one think. So too will Fay's appreciation of the ability of elephants "who spend their lives being haunted and killed by men" to find peace. Anyone who has observed elephants invariably notes how quietly they move. One minute a herd is gathered at a watering hole. The next, it is gone, leaving only footprints in the damp sand.
Time has run out for the great elephant walks, time and the land itself. The Dublin breeding programme is only small, but it is important and a beginning. It also provides a privileged chance to wonder at yet another of nature's beleaguered splendours.