This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with two men who have spent much of their lives living and working in Africa. Photographer Peter Beard first set foot on the continent in 1955. Richard Ruggiero, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, began his Peace Corps stint in 1981 in the northern Central African Republic.
“We are enemies of nature,” says Beard, whose photographs have documented the destruction of wildlife in Africa, including the plight of the African Elephant, the very topic of Ruggiero’s doctoral dissertation. Ruggiero continues to work in Africa today and says the situation with elephant poaching right now is a “nightmare.” That says, says Ruggiero, “People are the problem, but they are also the solution.”
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Africa can cast a spell on people. Today. Both of my guests, Peter Beard and Richard Ruggero, have attempted to tackle the issues Africa struggles with in very different ways, one with art and one with government policy. When you see the skies of Africa, they are so huge and you almost look into the eye of God. I can't explain it. That's something that enters your soul. That's Peter Beard's wife, Najma, were at their house and mont talk having a light lunch, anything like order. I know those skies she's talking about. I've been to Africa. I went to n and stayed in natal in South Africa. We were there for two months, living in a house on the edge of a game reserve. Just before we arrived, there were two lethal attacks by wild animals in the area. Signs were posted everywhere advising caution. It seemed everyone carried a weapon. I remember in eighteen year old production assistant on the film turned out to be packing a gun underneath his shirt. Africa certainly did feel wild and here I am interested in all of Peter Beard seventy four was born in New York City. I don't get tired ever. Went to the same schools as his father, Buckley pomfret Yale. His great grandfather was a railroad tycoon. His grandfather was heir to the lower Lard tobacco fortune. We go to the tuxedo clubs. My grandfather there pure lar Lard. But it's a great portrait. Peter Beard first felt the pull of Africa at age seven when he stepped into the African Hall of the American Museum of Natural History. Ten years later, at seventeen, he reached the continent with a camera in hand. I always take him pictures. Since you were a child before you were born, since you were a child, who encouraged you to do that? Why did that? Photography wasn't a mainstream hobby back then. I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won and I got a camera in about a void lander. Hey, now, don't you gonna sit here and criticize me? After Najma, Peter's wife sits about twenty ft from us, That is, when she's not pacing the grounds or lighting a cigarette, or checking on the food being served. So what was photography then to you? Meaning when you started, you know, it was very juvenile and like sentimental. I just liked number one, how easy it was. Number two. I was going to school, and you graduate and get out and get pictures of the guys in your class. I got all my group. If you ever interested, I've got all my albums in New York. Clearly you're someone who there's a lot of things you could have done right. You grew up in a very very comfortable family. You look like a movie star. When did things with you with photography? Really? When did it take hold of you? I never did. I'm just into subjects and things that are interesting. You can see that in the pictures, are right, don't You don't consider yourself a photographer? No, I'm not. If I can avoid it, you can see yourself a writer who takes pictures. I would say an escapist, right, Why? Because I went to art school. But I don't like the word art and I don't like the words. I don't like what's happening in the art world at Chelsea Million Studios there. I like things that are exciting or make you laugh, or something like that. Was your father artistic? No? No, did he collect art? Was Anson weird? Artistic? Peter turned to his brother, also named Anson, who was visiting that day and sitting on a bench behind us. Eventually Anson would join in the conversation, what did you study at Yale when you went to Yale? Well? When did you go to Yale? Because you because you sound so I don't know what the word is. Um, what did you say? The word of us crazy? That's his wife says, volunteered the word crazy. You sound so unorthodox. So I'm assuming did you go to Yale out of obligation? Was that like a family thing? Well? I was you want to go to you? I was going as a pre med and I suddenly realized going into pre med. And I'd also been to Africa one to two visits. Humans are the problem, so imagine being in the business of saving fucking humans. You went to Yale for what? What'd you started? Art? Did you finish? Oh? Yeah, you graduated. I did history of art, you know, all those things, American studies, and then I went to art school and I did Joseph Albert's in the art school. And when you left Yale, where'd you go Africa? So so you knew you've been to Africa before before you finished with Charles Darwin's grandson, by the way, And what was the genesis of that? Was your father an adventure people in your family adventurers like fa the Room with Woolworth Donahue and who did the greatest Safari's all with a hunter I've used never went never bird into bird shooting and stuff like that. It was not an Africa file. No, he had had a salmon river. He's salmon fishing and deer hunting and he was a great guy, but he was not really adventurous. I mean, I hate to use this phrase, but who turned you onto Africa? Well, I guess it was with this Quentin Ken's Darwin's grandson. We went South Africa, Madagascar, Kenya. So it was a damn good time and what happened to when you were there became an important part of your life. Well, I've got a lot of important not important pictures. No, I got a lot of lousy pictures, but subject matter, you know, Ryan knows things like that. But it was my interviews introduction to Charles Darwin. And I think the elimination of Darwin from our school studies, and the way he's been swept under the rug is at the root of almost all of our problems. Why we don't know anything about biology, zoology, ecology or nature. We are enemies of nature. Don't ever forget it. Peter Beard continued to go back to Africa. He made his reputation with a book called The End of the Game, published in nineteen sixty five, which chronicles the starvation of tens of thousands of elephants and other animals in Kenya's Tsavo National Park. He had purchased forty five acres in Kenya outside Nairobi and set up what he called Hog Ranch, named for the resident ward hogs in the area. I've still got a great place. Peter's photographs in the End of the Game stay with you. They are stark. Peter described the African Hall at the Museum all those years ago as possessing quote a darkness you could feel unquote. The same phrase comes to mind when looking at the image is in his book. It was overwhelmingly obvious that this enormous park was being eaten alive by an overpopulation of elephants. Because they'd had a nine year anti poaching campaign. They arrested all the traditional hunters. They were locked up. The population soared ate the trees and poaching was used as an excuse to continue raising money. What's the status of Tsavo now? What are the issues there now? Well, the bush is slowly growing back, but the cargated iron huts have expanded from villages into little cities. The human touches is like a disease. I mean, nothing they can do about Africans in Africa. Who's going to do anything? The national parks were pretty much held aside for for for accommodation housing, uh, you know, ship houses. And what's the status there now? A population? It was around five and a half million when I arrived to over forty million starvation and begging and going around the world looking for freebees. Yeah. At this point, Peter's brother, now with cigar in hand, raises his hand. What does Peter think about the fact that Bill Gates has put so much money into AIDS in South Africa while President u Becky pays no attention aids. There is really a density dependent phenomenon. The more of it the better. Frankly, Kenya is now way over forty million from five and a half. Just think about that. That means nobody lives happily. Everybody's a crook, everybody is on the make, everybody's sitting begging outside the American embassy. It's it's just cuts the country right off. You can't you can't survive population pollution on this level. Now, when you said that AIDS was a density dependent Yeah, and the more of it the better. Your wife was on her feet right away. Well, that's because everybody's very, very sentimental and they think forty million Africans is going to do a country good. No, it's not. Peter and Najma met in ninety five. Do you want to know? Nahma is Peter's third wife, after Sherrod Tigues and socialite Mini Cushing. Peter met Najma in Kenya, where she was born. I'd grown up there when I was educated in Europe. So when I came back, and how how much time have you spent back in Africa for the last you met? Eight five, So that's over twenty years ago. Well we used to live there a year at the time, a year there, years years ago. Well, god, yes, over twenty five years. So in the past, over how much time have you spent in Africa during that? Not enough? All? Not much? But is it? Is it safe to say though that Africa cast this tremendous shadow over both of you. You're both fairly my soul. It's the best place to be, but it's also increasingly diminished. How has he changed in the time you've known him? What was he like when you met him? Uh? He was socially incredibly out there, but I thought of it as totally normal. I thought this was an incredible human being who done incredible things. But I do remember this really funny moment. We'd gone to some shrink for some weird reason. I can't remember what it was, but and Peter left the room to go to the loop, and the chap just looked at me said, if I were you, young lady, I'd make a run for it, but you didn't. Why. I'm a really stubborn wench. That's really all. I'm woln or right all up, basically. But he's a very colorful character. He's a colorful, exhausting character. Yes, that's true. You're married now and how many five years of how many children do you have one? Just one? You had no children prior. I'm not I'm not really a reproducer, You're not. We just have the divine zar. I have said that Zara was an accident. I love accidents and everything I do, I love accidents, and people criticize me that I told him before this interview. If he ever said I would literally attack him. What's the matter with an accident? I think of Francis Bacon visual word looking for accidents. But you were a famous Uh what's the word? What should I say? What should I call? He was a famous? Thank you? You're a famous libertine? People say, and you you number three last years? How did that happen? What's the difference? Well, you learn, you get better picking something, you're better picking, you get a better pick better and h then you just get in a sort of prayer position and go forward. So in an age where people in the modern world, I mean the world is divided between people who don't know you at all, people who know you as a photographer and the writer of these books and this adventurer and so forth. They know you as a famous socialite, if you will, they know you as all these things. And then there's young kids who served the internet who know you that you're the guy that got crushed by the elephant on YouTube. Yeah, what was different that day from any every other day? That day we were out there, We had no security, no gun. It was Peter was helping a friend who was opening up a safari camp. We're basically on a picnic. We've done the a promotional shooting. Suddenly like fifteen elephants came over the hill a cowherd, you know, like they are. You don't get bulls that at that age. And it was on the very It's just it's another population story. It was on the edge of Tanzania Kuca Mountain and elephants come in and grab a cabbage at night and they get shot. So I'm sure this is a herd that had been shot up, but they were very skittish, so they take the bullet and keep moving. They don't go down, They just shoot him to scare him. Now they take the bullet and move. You know, that doesn't do any harm than her Well through they shooting at night, you know, a big black thing air bam, and you just have a lot of wounding. Um And this female gave us a demo, which is totally normal. We ran back. I was in long pants early morning wet grass. The elephants went back up the hill, so to speak, and we just stood there. The son's a bitch. This matriarch came again, so then she starts coming. We start running again and make it feel happy. But it wasn't stopping. And I looked into the elephant on an ant hill and think his head butted here. Well, no, no, no, it's many things. I was up in the air and down and the camera took off. I think we'd run far enough so that it knew we weren't dangerous. The herd came around. The herd was it was actually almost worth it. Uh, that should have been the title of the boy Almost worth it. I was completely blind by the way my optic nerve had been bounced off. I couldn't see a goddamn thing. I had a huge hole in my leg went right through here, and my hip was broken in seven or eight places at this point. By the way in the interview, I want to mention, Beard is hiking up his shorts and showing in the innermost portion of his thigh. The closest area to his actual personality itself is this hideous gash a hole in his leg. So anyway, there was an amazing gaping hole and there was no blood coming up, by the way, but I couldn't see it. I got splintered hips. I don't I didn't get speared because I couldn't see the thing. And um, but did you think when that happened, did you think that was it? Did you thought you thought? You thought that was it? Well, you can't escape an elephant. You thought that was the end? Do you think how romantic? No? I thought the parts are I just finished her book. Um no, I was just felt like an idiot. So then how long did it take you to recover? You were? You were? You were flat on your back for months? Correct? I bled out going into the hospital. It was about four hours to get to the hospital. I eventually had to be flown too. I see, they think that's what did you just say? No no roads? So the man who complained that roads have ruined Africa is the man is saying going to no fucking roads here. It was a very bumpy little ride. But even in your in your way and yeah, I mean, you don't seem like somebody who's eager to take a bow for this or anything else. But in your way through your work through art, through photography. Do you think that you've been responsible for some of the uh, the good that's come there in terms of casting a light on that at all? Truthfully, I know nothing at all, no positive result. I know lots of people look at these pops. They don't even see that there's a starvation scene. They see ivory, They think, ohvations. Peter's brother Anson speaks up again, saying he's heard him described as a conservationist. I'm for a conservation, but it's mostly a con that's the trouble. It's sentimental. Buy an elephant or drink a lion and acre so some of them have to die. Well, the way human spreading. The whole lot of the answer is limiting human development. You've got population pollution is the key, and that that's the thing. But I'm afraid it's partly due to Hitler. You can't talk about population dynamics. You never hear the word, do you. You never hear pecking order, You never hear any of the words that relate to all the struggles that are going on there because we have decided not to talk about any of the realities. But it's do gooder conservation. It's sentimental or shit. What we're talking about in essences is changing human behavior. Richard Ruggero is Chief of the Near East, South, Asia and Africa at the Division of International Conservation at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Africa called out to him too. He joined the Peace Corps. He was placed in the Northern Central African Republic. Richard spent most of the nineteen eighties and nineties living in Africa, and he doesn't see things that differently from photographer Peter Beard. Richard Rogero has spent over thirty years in conservation. His dissertation from nine was on the plight of the African elephant, a problem he's still trying to tackle. You know, I could describe it that if God forbid, what was happening to elephants were happening to people, we would call it a massive genocide. They're being exterminated for ivory on a mass level, correct using the latest technology nets, weapons, cell phones, sat phones, vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and the ease by which massive amounts of ivory can be illegally shipped to markets has never been greater, and it is primarily for ivory. Is an ivory driven market. Primarily, you know, certainly there are some of the other uses as well. While bush meat people eat elephants in what regions of Africa? Do they They don't export that meat, do They're not really. Most of it is consumed either in rural villages, but increasingly and more disturbingly, it's exported to cities within Africa. The problem there is that it produces a market that's very, very difficult to satiate. Is it labeled as elephant meat when it's sold in more it's not labeled so much as you go to a market stall and the meats there and the person selling it will tell you what it is. It's fairly obvious to look at it. So people in African society, not just impoverished people, they eat elephant meat and that's a food staple to them. Yeah, I mean the impoverished people who eat elephant meat opportunistically sporadically. Is nothing new about that, and a lot of people would say there's nothing wrong about that given a sustainable level of off take. The problem here is that in some cases there's an additional inducement to eat often meet number one, it's a bush meet in many places. I'm speaking primarily of central Africa where you ask the question where does this happen most? It happens all over Africa, but mostly in Central Africa. At this point you say Central Africa, are there governments there that condone this more and encourage this more than others? No, the culprit I wouldn't say that they openly condone it. It's just by negligence or in action it effectively causes the problem to be worse. There are some countries that are very very good at it and make really good earnest efforts, such as in Central Africa. Gabon is clearly a leader, very progressive president who might be the greenest president on Earth. Ali Bungo is his name, and um the system, the ethos, the government and many people and even down to villages are very supportive of the concept of sustainable off take or respecting laws. It's not a perfect place. The problem there is poachers are coming in very well armed from across borders and they're killing elephants at an incredible rate. So Gabon is working very hard on that, and that does contrast with some countries who either lack the political will or maybe this is more important, lack the capacity to do anything about it now um, the idea that Kenya and areas like that, which are probably the most well known, I would imagine. I think that the people have who have that romanticized as Dennison, you know, Peter Beard, Meryl Streep and Redford getting on a train together or get on a biplane together. And that's not the highest concentration of elephant. No. No. But when you describe the percentage of the populations in Kenya now um receiving increased pressure, that's a manifestation of the great symptom. The symptom is poaching, the symptom is habit destruction. The disease is something else, and I think that's what Peter Beard alludes to. What do you think it is, Well, it's a human induced problem. Nature has some problems that people are not responsible for. I mean, you can talk about volcanoes, tsunamies. People aren't responsible for that. But many of the problems that nature, the wild wildlife experience are at the hands of man. To coin a phrase, So the problem is basically people's attitudes about wildlife in general, about elephants specifically. It's a function of shortsightedness. It's a function of apathy. It's a function of greed and it's a function of human numbers. Is it fair to say? And I don't have a sophisticated analogy here, but would you put poachers, even with their high powered weaponry and satellite phones and and aviation equipment and so forth, would you put them in the category more with like people who are making moonshine during prohibition and it's more of a kind of a rag tag bunch. It's not that sophisticated or they more the equivalent of Mexican drug lords who are actually controlling the regions politically and killing the political leadership that opposes them and terrorizing. How sophisticated is poaching in Africa in terms of its political power? Both exists the unsophisticated, the poacher who maybe has a fabricated shotgun or uses snares or poison, and that still exists. It's been the case for a long time. It's the relative proportion of poachers. It's the predominance now of these more sophisticated, more aggressive, frequently militarized poachers that's happening, and that's what's causing this chronic problem that we've seen it. Ebbs and it flows, but it has gotten dramatically worse in recent years. It's a result of, as I say, the market for ivory and the ease by which it can be obtained in technology, guns, helicopters, political background, indifference, those points come into play. Is it fair to say that that in Gabon, where Ali Bongo is having some degree of success, what's he doing and or not doing that's leading to that success that other places it's getting by them. First, the country or an individual or an institution needs to be aware of the problem. And I think you know, the problem is becoming very conscious in the minds of the public. Certainly politicians um in Africa are aware of the problem. The next step is the political will to do something about it, and the third step is having the capacity to act on the political will. Well, Bungo has the political will and he is developing. And that's what my organization Fish and Wildlife helps them with is to develop the capacity to deal with the problem that the awareness is brought to everybody's attention. So the answer to your question succinctly is he's aware of the problem, he's willing to do something about it, and he's mustering the capacity and the wherewithal to actually do it. When was the first time you were aware of Peter Beard's photography and his work there in Africa. What was your response to that when you first saw that. I was first aware of it. I think I lived in Kenya in the late eighties. We knew that Peter was out in hog Ranch and um occasionally you'd see him across a crowded room at a at um some sort of function, But um, I never had close contact with him at all. We just lived in the same place, the same country. My reaction was that he is an artist and he is doing some fantastic I was first just physically attracted to the beauty of his photographs and how he put together his books. But thinking about it farther down the road, I mean I was struck by almost quaintness. Isn't the right word. That it was a reflection of a of a time that was fleeting. You alluded to Isaac Dennison and the Hollywood images of what Kenya was like. Certainly Peter's work had a great deal of that sort of nostalgic feel, very very beautifully presented. But to me, there's a great function in that and and the great function now decades after he produced his main book or his his artistic displays, the photography mainly is it shows what was it. Peter's work is a it's a sitegeist. It's it's a representation of what things were in the fifties and sixties in Kenya. And by contrasting that, we can see how far things have gone. And that enables us to predict the future or to foresee it, or to anticipate it. And if we can't do that, we can't deal with it. We have to be proactive. That's the secret to conservation. You have to anticipate the trend to be able to proactively deal with it. In Peter's book really gives us that that sort of nostalgic or that retrospective you that's very helpful to us. When I look at his pictures, it's almost like he's Frederick Remington's exactly. Yeah, that's that's my point. You know, it's just from an artistic standpoint, it's fantastic stuff. But as I say, as a historical perspective and a reminder, it's it has a function as well as just an aesthetic value. But for the sake of this program, if you had to give it a word or a phrase, how bad is it right now? Uh? My thirty two years of experience of watching it very closely, this this is a nightmare. It is unbelievably bad, and we've been seeing it accelerating in that negative trend. So once again it's it's the rate of change. What's the hotspot? Where is it really like out of control Central Africa? What country the Western Congo basin where there's still a lot of elephants really getting hammered d r C. The demock at a Republic of Congo is so degraded already. For example, Ian Douglas Hamilton's estimated three fifty to four hundred thousand elephants there when he did his big continental survey. They're about twelve thousand left now, so it's pretty much the end of the game there for elephants. But farther in the Western Congo basin, Gabo is an example, the Republic of Congo, that's the smaller one. There's still some elephants. They've been greatly reduced, but there's still populations that are meaningful. Oh, that's hard to answer. Um. Rough roughly fifty thou of thousands sure, there's one park called me in Kebe that has probably twice as many forest elephants as the entire d RC. It's a place that the poachers no. Um just received a report yesterday by the the Echo Guards who are out looking at it, and despite massive intervention by the government of Gabon, there are still big pockets of poachers. So this is this is a problem. That sure great to point out that there's political will in Gabon and that they have a motivated National Parks Agency, But when you're up against the scale of the problem, the intensity, the danger of running into people who aren't just going to run away when they're confronted, but are going to stand and fight, this is a whole different dimension. So the answer to your question is how bad is it? It's horrible, It's terrible, and it's getting worse. Um, what's the political situation? Then, what's the government situation there? Well, DRC has been challenged by civil war for decades. Let me put it this way, it's easy to see how the government can be preoccupied with more urgent needs. That must be the constant problem in some aspects of that. Every country has to have priorities when you're talking about putting your limited ability into saving people's lives versus saving elephants lives. Well, there's an obvious priority there when you're there, when you're when you're dealing with the people there, are you encouraged by the amount of people, the percentage of people, their native people who care about this issue when you think are really willing to take action or are they in the in the minority? Well, it depends on where you are and how you ask the question. I mean, that's I lived with them for years, but you ask them the questions how do they feel about elephants? So what does living alongside of elephants mean to you? What do you need to do things that are good for that coexistence? And the answer is highly variable. In some places, elephants don't really mess with people. They stay separate and um that's the way both elephants and people prefer it. In other places, agriculture tends to is tending more and more as it expands to get into traditional elephant ranges, and so that that interfaces now very obvious. And usually when people in elephants are in conflict, elephants lose um first, people lose their crops and sometimes get trampled, and that's that's very serious. It's tragic. But eventually the elephants get bullets. People love deer and Connecticut until they eat your flowers and they want them shot. Sure, So you know, it would be a similar thing if you were to ask somebody whose apple crops are being destroyed by deer, what do you think a deer? And they're going to tell you that they're not very pleasant neighbors and their bad garden pests. On the other hand, somebody who isn't affected negatively by them can relate to their esthetic value. Africans can do that. Many of them are very proud of elephants. It's a part of their culture and their heritage. But living with them is costly in a lot of ways, and sometimes there needs to be an incentive, and the distancentive is enforcing the lawn. Frankly, while that's very important, it's only a short term solution that really doesn't get to the cru of the issue. The crux is what we're talking about, and that is the attitudes of people and their willingness to coexist with large animals that compete with people for water, for space, or in some cases, are more profitable to them dead than alive. So sure, it's it's an economic calculus, but it's not quite that simple. They're also values, pride, etcetera. One of the things that Beard said, which was more all encompassing on this theme of the sentimentality of the conservation movement was you know that evolution has to be allowed to take its course in Africa in all ways, and and and then he said that that AIDS was a blessing on the African continent, that you know, something has got to happen there to reduce that population. And do you find that in Africa? Of course, they don't have an economy that compares with out of the United States. A few places do, But do you find that what's going on in economic policy and social policy and agricultural food, energy, things that they need for their human population to survive and to develop, are those so bad that that it's understandable that the elephants are going to follow by the wayside In some places, Um, all of those factors help. In some places they're a net negative. You know, Africa is a big, diverse continent, and certainly there are examples of how all of those factors can work to the favor of the natural system, and there are certainly examples that in their absence or when they're poorly applied, when economic development or agricultural policy, or all of the things you mentioned. Forestry, you know, Central African forests are being cut to provide hardwood for international markets. So so so so be making people aware of boycotting that market would be a step. Well, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say boycotting is is the right term or the right approach. It's it's being an informed consumer. It's it's about having more manageable stewardship of manageable stewardship certification, but real certification that actually works and is transparent. This is not news to anybody who's who's thought or spoken about these things. But those practices are not yet perfected. UM. We have an idea that those tools can be applied very well and many of the things we're talking about our tools. Development as an incentive for conservation is is certainly known and it has been practiced, but it's still it's a work in progress. UM. Sport hunting, for example, can be an excellent tool to motivate and to derive financial benefits to people who have to make sacrifices to live with elephants, of sport, hunting, of what of elephants, of of lions, and the very controversial subjects. Of course, some people think elephants should never be hunted because they are extraordinary animals. Other people think of them as being subject to any economic um, motivation or initiative. So there's a wide spectrum of views that sort of get more into philosophy and ethics than anything else. What are your personal feelings about that? My biases, I've lived with elephants for years and years. I studied them for my doctor at I took considerable risks to study them and certainly to keep them alive, So I'm very biased. To me personally, shooting an elephant for fun, for entertainment is not cool. However, that doesn't deny the fact that other people find that okay and that there can be benefits from a well managed system. Look, if what Peter is saying is that wildlife needs to be managed, then I think he's correct. Elephants need to be managed, so do people. In essence, not the same way, obviously, but as the world becomes more crowded, it's incumbent on all of us to think of ways of making room for us all and not to sacrifice something like the African elephant because of our short sightedness or greed. I'm speaking of humanities, shortsightedness or greed. So that's the challenge. Why do you think people, I mean in the United States, where Americans are sadly as obsessed with their cable, telephone, internet bundling charges more than they are with the fate of species of animals around the world. Why should Americans care about what's happening to the great wildlife heritage in Africa. It comes down to valuing elephants, their existence, what it means to the world. Is the world a better place with or without elephants? Because that choice is being played out passively admittedly, but by our ineffectiveness or are in action, we're moving towards a time when elephants are so greatly reduced. If it matters to people that such remarkable creatures products of creation or evolution, as you choose, is the world a better place or is it greatly diminished by the loss of these animals? In my opinion, the world is a greatly diminished place. The quality of life on Earth is diminished when we lose key important things. There's a very practical function that elephants provide. They have ecological value. They spread seeds, they dig for water, they expose salt rich soils. In their absence, things change and call it evolution, but it's not a natural one because it's being caused by the problem we're talking about. So there is an aesthetic value to the world, there is a practical or ecological value to the world, and in some cases there's a and economic value to the world, and all of those things count. A quick thought think about where the North American bison was at the turn of the twentieth century. There are probably more bison, admittedly in their altered form, in North America now than there are elephants in Africa. And what does that mean. It means that people's attitude toward them. Maybe it's because rich landowners want to see the natural fauna and therefore make the sacrifice of dedicating their pasture land to them. Maybe it's because they like to eat beef alow um. But whatever the motivation is, bison have a value that justifies their populations. Going from a few hundred back in the dark days two maybe half a million. That says something. It's it's not an identical case. It's sometimes dangerous to compare across tax and across continents, but I think the concept is clear that unless people value elephants aesthetically, practically, ecologically, unless they value them, people will cease to have a motivation to preserve them. Remember what Bob Dylan said on Subterranean in Homesick Blues, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Sure, Okay, Well, you know I have a scientific background, and science is the basis of everything we do, and it needs to be there and it needs to be good science. But at the point we are now with what we're talking about, it's about people and understanding them and how to deal with their desires, their their characteristics. And that's what we're focusing on, and that's where a great deal of the hope is. You know, people are the problem, but they're also the solution. For more information on Richard bridgero the decimation of the elephants in Africa and what you can do to help, visit Here's the Thing dot org. You'll also see photographs by my first guest, Peter beard. It was overwhelmingly obvious that this enormous park was being eaten alive by an overpopulation of elephants. Because they've had a nine year anti poaching campaign, they arrested all the traditional hunters. They were locked up. The population soared ate the trees, and poaching was used as an excuse to continue raising money. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing, m