African elephants are losing two battles – against Africans for their habitat and against the Chinese for their ivory.

The numbers are truly staggering. When the white man started to “explore” Africa, there were reckoned to be 25 million elephants on the continent. There are now less than half a million. That’s 2% of their original population and it is estimated that over 30,000 elephants are killed each year so they could be all gone in a decade.

The poaching is on an industrial scale – whole herds killed by gangs that mount weeks-long campaigns to meet the need for ivory from the increasingly rich Chinese – the destination for over 90% of illegal ivory. This can only happen with planning, serious investment, compliance and corruption of African officials, and a huge blind eye turned by the Chinese government who claim that noting illegal is happening on their watch. Around 20,000 elephants are killed for ivory per year. Not one or two picked off by starving villagers – whole communities including infants and females.

Additionally local conflicts with farmers or villagers almost double that number – elephants picked off because they trampled a fence or because a village needed food.

This is a slaughter along the lines of the American Buffalo which was hunted effectively to extinction.

The elephants are losing but we are the losers.

(The only elephants that we saw at Kruger this week were lone males who are kicked out by the matriarchs when they are not needed. So they wanted alone until it’s time for them to compete to get back into the group and perform their manly functions. No I don’t mean pay the bills, unblock sinks, and take out the garbage)