Animal Lives Matter
Our ecosystem is an extremely complex network, where a microscopic life-form might be intertwined with a giant mammalian specie for its scope of survival. This network once disrupted, has a huge impact, which one is not able to realize if this disturbance is inspected at a superficial level. We do understand that not everyone is born to be a highly skilled zoologist to appreciate this intricate system. Still, ignorance on our part towards more evident things is unjustified. What I am trying to say is that no matter how little we know, one cannot be impractical enough to take someone’s life and that too a speechless animal.
Yet, many ruthless minds walk on the earth with the sole purpose of exploitation of innocent animals for their selfish needs. The recent incident where a female elephant was slayed as she was fed a pineapple filled with explosives left us shocked and exposed a dark side of our world, which was long considered non-existent. What aches our heart more is the fact that the elephant had a yet to be born baby elephant in her womb as her cries of anguish were heard by many but listened by nobody, finally leading to her death after three days of pain and struggle.
For one whole day, this elephant managed to gather attention from all media; there were tweets, Instagram posts, news updates on TV, politicians, movie stars, and cricketers expressing their grief. All this attention surely must have made her a legend in her community of elephants. Her name might be written down in the book called ‘The adventures of our legendary ancestors’ curated by the honorable leader of her elephant clan only if such thing existed because all this news and social media attention didn’t seem to serve a higher purpose.
Within 24 hours, the story was long forgotten, and we got back to our usual lives, checking our newsfeed for coronavirus updates. This is probably not the first time something like this has ever happened and neither the last unless we choose to act upon it.
To protect wildlife, not everyone can take a flight to the nearest savannah and start tending to wild animals like Steve Irwin. Saving the wildlife is not easy, and the ways to do it are neither as direct as following a recipe to make pancakes, but if we choose to do our bit, then surely the results will be apparent after years of effort.
As written at the beginning of this passage, all life-forms are interconnected for their survival and thus helping one can save the other. Putting up bird feeders, birdhouses and bee feeders, and many more such things is a great idea for a start. Plant as many trees as you can. This you can even post on your social media, inspiring your friends and family to do the same. If you happen to live in areas exhibiting rich biodiversity, keep an eye out for any incident of animal exploitation and inform the concerned authorities regarding it. There are many international and domestic organizations, funded by the government and otherwise, working for wildlife conservation. Try to know more about them and learn how they operate. There might be ways in which we can play a bigger role in protecting wildlife through these organizations.
This elephant’s death should not go in vain, just like many others. Let this remind us how much cruelty is still out there, which needs to be put to an end. Doing our part to save wildlife should not be considered as an act of kindness but rather our responsibility — the responsibility to revert the damage that we have caused to our biosphere.
The views in the article are personal.
