He thought the elephant was just standing still looking through the binoculars he was shocked!

He thought the elephant was just standing still looking through the binoculars. He was shocked as the largest of all land mammals. African elephants play an important role in balancing natural ecosystems. They trample forests and dense grasslands, making room for smaller species to coexist. Elephants also create water holes used by other wildlife, as they dig dry riverbeds when rainfall is low.

Elephants are capable of changing and shaping the structure of a forest from plucking bunch of grass to breaking woods, they’re called as ecological engineers because their activities affects the lives of other living organisms. So it’s absolutely worth to note that the absence of elephants can cause too much loss to humans and this biodiversity and will eventually lose a good friend indeed they’re, instrumental in fertilizing the african plains, and they spread tree seeds everywhere, thus keeping other species alive and well.

They’re highly intelligent and social animals that are sentient and have family structure now is any of those actually useful to selfish humans, who only see value in something if it can be of use to them, probably not, but then again as a selfish human. Here I find most other humans to be of no use, so there’s that at least the elephants are interesting because they’re, big and strong elephants have been used for years, if not centuries, to haul heavy items, push over trees and the things that humans forced them to Do or not eat or they were mercilessly beaten. An elephant in zimbabwe was shot in the head by suspected poachers and was believed to be walking around with the wound.

Between three and six weeks, the elephant was nicknamed pretty boy was said to be around 25 years old. Fortunately, the gentle giant was discovered by veterinarians from aware trust. Zimbabwe in mana pools national park. Dr lisa marabini said that pretty boy approached the veterinarians and showed no signs of aggression reports bbc it’s like he knew we were there with the intention of helping him the team sedated him took an x-ray and cleaned the wound, but decided it was safer to leave The bullet behind dr marabini said elephants in monopoles. National park have long been the targets of poacher who kill the majestic animals for their ivory.

Hunting areas exist near the park. What’S heartbreaking to know is that the elephant had not just one but multiple injuries. We think he was shot outside of the park and came into the park for refuge. She said explaining that if the bullet had hit a few centimeters lower, it would have gone into his brain. Pretty boy also had a shoulder injury, an old scar near his spine.

Also suggested that he may have been shot at before in the past. We respect we suspect he was shot in the head first and turned to flee and the poacher put a bullet in his side. In a facebook post from 2016, a group shared the details of the gentle giant story. Writing hurry up and wait is a common saying in wildlife circles, as it usually takes more time to find the animals than it does to treat it not so. On the 13th of june, when pretty boy heard they’d arrived in mana pools, he made himself available for examination within half an hour coming right up to their car, an extremely gentle and relaxed bowl.

The vets managed to get a good look at what immediately became apparent. Was a hole going into his forehead, the elephant was tranquilized and then taken in for an x-ray, which showed a deformed bullet present inside his head. The group continued an x-ray was taken of pretty boy’s skull, which, in the vet’s opinion, confirms the presence of a deformed bullet. He was likely shot at several centimeters too high for a kill shot and the bullet glanced off his skull, causing a depression fracture of the bones in his sinuses. The bullet is lodged under his skin some five centimeters away from the wound, but because of the difficulty of taking several x-ray angles on a skull that big, it could not be sufficiently triangulated to definitively located.

Bullets are usually sterile when they penetrate tissue as they generate. So much heat, so if they don’t hit a vital structure, they can often be left. Dr mirabini director of oware told the dodo the bullet glanced off his skull and caused a fracture in the bones of his sinuses. Furthermore, his head wound was infected. It was essential to remove the dead pieces of bone so that the body could continue to heal the infection she couldn’t help but notice how gentle he was.

Despite how many times humans have hurt him, i never usually feel totally comfortable getting very close to a wild elephant. She said, but he literally emanated serenity. There were no aggressive vibes coming from him whatsoever. The sweet elephant was recovering and doing much better. The next day aware shared a picture of the elephant and wrote pretty boy the day after treatment looking much happier and eating.

Well, we were relieved to find he was also very relaxed around us. They nicknamed him pretty boy after removing bone fragments from around the bullet lodged five centimeters beneath the surface of the wound, he’s likely to make a full recovery, a spokesman for the aware trust said: pretty boy was given: ultra-long-acting antibiotics and parasiticides.

The vets were worried about his weak back, might interfere with him getting to his feet after reversal, but he recovered uneventfully and then lay his head against a tree and dosed for half an hour the following day. He was feeling much happier and very relaxed and allowed to stretch, keith and lisa the vets to get very close to him for a final assessment. Just last week we reported a pregnant elephant in india died while standing in a river trying to soothe injuries on her mouth caused by the food she had laden with crackers.

Keeping pineapples with crackers is a very common practice in these parts of the country. As a measure to drive away wild boars that damage the crops, despite the horrifying pain she must have been in, she too did not cause any damage nor attack any humans in retaliation. Every year since 1991, zimbabwe sells permits to hunt 500 elephants the right to shoot and kill. One elephant is yours for ten thousand dollars. The hunting season begins in april and lasts until the onset of monsoon in november park.

Authorities say this is necessary and in the best interest of the animals and the locals covet has brought our tourism down significantly. We have to pay our staff, we need money for fuel uniforms and the upkeep of our national parks and animals. Our parks are self-funded, the government does not fund us. Tinashe farawa, spokesperson for the zimbabwe parks and wildlife management authority tells cnt over the phone. The zpwma is a government agency in charge of managing wildlife in the country.

Its website spells out its vision to be the world leader in sustainable conservation. For this, the zpwma needs funds. We have a budget of 25 million dollars and sports hunting forms a small but important part of the funds. Zimbabwe’S elephant population is almost 83 000. According to the last census, in 2013, The population grows by about 5 percent every year, so we have above 100 000 elephants.

Our maximum carrying capacity is 40 000.. The overpopulation is leading to several accidents, including damage of crops and human fatalities. He suggested that care is taken to minimize the impact on the species. The elephants that are harvested are usually old and likely to die in natural death.

After a few years, the african country draws most of its hunters from the u.s, russia, europe and mexico. In addition to paying for the license to kill the elephants, the tourists pay professional hunters to guide them and have their trophies treated by taxidermists and exported back to their home countries. According to a bloomberg report, the skin of the elephant is used to make bags and belts, while the tusks, the most coveted part, are used for artifacts, jewelry and other gift items. Domestic trade is permitted, but not international ferraro tells cnt, but it’s not the game that everyone is after.

He says more than the offtake of animals. What draws people is the thrill of being in the wild people, love spending time in the bushes, watching the sunrise, sunset and stars, some of them spend 18 days, but aren’t successful with even one shooting and that doesn’t seem to bother them. Even though the quota is 500, we don’t exceed 250 harvests per season.

It’s well known that elephants are clever and social, so it makes sense that friends and family would share useful information and, as a 2015 study highlighted, there’s truth to the old cliche about elephants, never forgetting they have excellent spatial memories, repeatedly taking the shortest routes to watering Holes up to 30 miles away. So if malika and yada did tell this male about good people at othumba, it’s possibly he mentally filed it away the location for emergencies.

Poachers kill about 20 000 elephants every single year for their tusks, which are then traded illegally. In the international market to eventually end up as ivory trinkets, this trade is mostly driven by demand for ivory and parts of asia. There are customers waiting to buy ivory for a very high price. In some places, a poacher can earn twice the average annual salary of a local for a single tusk for people who are poor. It can seem very appealing.

However, poverty does not excuse or justify slaughtering an intelligent and endangered animal. There are always alternatives. Despite educating people about the intelligence and magnificence of elephants and the very real threat of their extinction, money can be intoxicating and irresistible, so the most efficient way to eradicate poaching is to eradicate the market. The real irony here is that we would get more ivory if we collected it from elephants that were already dead. The tusks grow throughout the animal’s entire life.

No elephant need to be killed for its tusks, but because of our greed and lack of patience to allow the animals to live out their lives in peace, poachers cruelly murder them instead. Tusks also often come in handy when food or water is scarce and elephants must dig or scrape to get at vital survival resources.

They’re known to dig in dried up water pans in order to create a well in which water rises and fills the hole making a drinking water source that was otherwise inaccessible. Other animals have frequently been seen to benefit from this elephant landscape construction process by then using the new water source and drought conditions. If none of the elephants had this ability due to removed tusks, much more suffering would occur in difficult conditions without the landscape alteration ability of the elephant’s tusks just in kenya, there are about thirty seven thousand elephants.

Most male and female african elephants are over two and a half years old have tusks so about thirty thousand individuals with some ivory. Even if you could immobilize at the world record of five a day, the operation would take 15 years of full-time work and by that time the first elephant would have re-grown meter-long tusks.

I always knew elephants were highly intelligent and, of course, supposedly remember things for long periods. I’Ve always had respect for the way they protect their young and vulnerable, but this took my respect to an amazing level. However, tragically, unlike pretty boy, she could not be saved sometimes, or is it most times, animals seem far more human than us, thanks for reading.