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China? What can I say? Well, what everyone usually says about China and Wildlife together is often very critical, but I sat up last week when CNN ran a piece called “Elephant herd is headed home”. 

Nearly 18 months ago, we were getting reports of a herd of elephants moving through urban China. Given their insatiable desire for ivory, I wondered how far this herd would actually get. I did not anticipate the groundswell of local support and the result of nearly 1,500 men and women allocated to watch over this herd and protect it as it moved across the country.

The message is clear, ‘Elephants are precious – alive not dead – even in China.’ The Chinese government and people deserve our thanks and congratulations.
Ironically, CNN’s video is similar to a version Beverly and I showed in China at the Woman’s Village Forum some years ago. 195 million people in China followed our talk – indicative that elephants do indeed have ambassadors in China. The points we made then are as valid today. These are ancient creatures.

Ten million years ago, elephants were already moving through the swamps of Africa, with a refined grasp of language, often as rumbles at such low frequency, which allow their communication to move through trees and across wetlands. They have such a heightened sense of altruism in that a single matriarch will step out, often into a hail of bullets, to save her herd but is also the one who sets the pace for old and young alike as they move across the landscape.

They have immense respect for each other, for other animals and us, and go to extraordinary lengths to avoid conflict. They have intelligence. They can sense water ten metres under the sand and think in the past, the present and the future. They often set the course of their movement by allowing for the weather, storms or water – usually days ahead. And they pay respect to their dead.

Thirty years ago, we wrote a piece for National Geographic Magazine called ‘An Elephant Wake’ where we witnessed their silent rituals around the bones of their dead. We have subsequently seen this over and over. They are sentient beings, sensitive and unthreatening. They share almost all of their characteristics with humans – empathy, trust, dignity, altruism – except one; the ability to be cruel.
At Great Plains, I think we offer some of the finest elephant viewing opportunities in the world! These range from the sights and sounds of watching massive herds in the Selinda area of Botswana area, where they cluster in their thousands along the rivers and Selinda Spillway, or to the Mana Pools area in Zimbabwe and our private Sapi Reserve. Here, near our soon to be opened Tembo Plains Camp (Tembo meaning elephant), elephants stand on their back legs as they reach for delectable Albida pods. Or are seen swimming in the Zambezi River. Kenya’s ol Donyo Lodge offers up close and very personal viewing (at toenail level) in our sunken and open-air hides.

Big herds, intimate behaviour and being super close for all those that journey into our elephant world.

World Elephant Day is often overshadowed by the lions, but we never let it go unappreciated. I spent some time online at ol Donyo Lodge’s waterhole hide cam recently. Amazing sights to simply enjoy at home. Soon we will be upgrading that camera to infrared, enabling you to watch the last of the big tuskers at night too.

Our elephant meditations, recording of elephant’s rumbles, played softly whilst having a massage or to moments actually hearing bull elephants slurp at the water’s edge is another level of peace and pampering altogether.