Click.
The door is shut and the last machine gun toting soldier is in.
paw paw paw paw paw paw paw ..... the blades start to spin faster and faster.
The chopper is off. It lifts up a few hundred feet up and darts forward towards the Sudanese border for a routine surveillance patrol.
These patrols usually carry only 2, however today there are 3 men with the pilot.
The men are quiet and resolute. They have their orders.
One is a spotter, the other two are gunners.
The chopper flies steadily West and finds the Sudanese border. Below there are no lines drawn by humans, just wild jungle, divided by a dry creek which serves as a visual marker. The chopper flies past areas we denote on maps as Bire Kpatous and Mbarizunga. These are game reserves. In these places, hunting of big game is legal.
Big game is lucky when it doesn't wander into the game reserve. Usually...
The chopper continues west northwest.
The mission is to search for militias, revolutionaries, murdering and thieving bands of humans. Usually.
The pilot makes the chopper take a sudden turn southwest. He is very clear on where he is going, away from the prescribed mission. He flies past the places where hunters are waiting for the big game, over some forest towns with some human inhabitants and then speeds steady and fast over the northern border of Garamba National Park. This is a place where big game is safe and protected.
Usually.
It is early morn, the orders mentioned that the park rangers will not return to this side of the massive park for days. But one never knows. There is little time to waste.
The chopper flies low.
The shooters open the side doors bringing a sudden and constant wafting of air into the cabin. The spotter has his large binoculars up and searching around.
Now he sees something. He barks out something above the roar of the spinning blades and the swooshing wind and points. The pilot listens and moves the chopper in the direction the human finger is pointing too.
All is silent.
The park rangers are in silence.
They are standing breathless in front of the bloodbath and the stench.
22 Elephants are strewn about, tuskless and rotting.
The bullet holes are mostly in the heads, right between the eyes.
There are entire families in this herd - mamas and papas and babies.
The babies tusks still had not come in, but they where killed because they too would have been dangerous to the humans who came down from the sky after murdering
their parents.
Somewhere in a grand home of a very wealthy person , the tusks will be a centerpiece of art to be displayed.....
From NY Times - Here is the article that inspired this diary.... I am sick to my stomach with this tragedy....
This is a tragedy as it is.
The chopper is likely American and the bullets and guns are likely ours as well.
Taxpayer money helped to arm these murderers and they should be stopped.
I wrote this today because I feel great pain for these elephants and animals who are
being slaughtered for greed or for the hell of it.
The hunters themselves, and even the people who cut the tusks out, they do not bother me.
They are poor countrymen and women who live in a brutal world and are just taking orders and making a living. But WHY is IVORY still on the market? Why is it not SHAMEFUL to OWN IVORY? Elephants are protected in many areas, but they are legally hunted in game reserves for FOOD. Simply killing such a large and fascinating and noble creature for a decoration, is absoultely barbaric and INHUMANE!
Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits.
Africa is in the midst of an epic elephant slaughter. Conservation groups say poachers are wiping out tens of thousands of elephants a year, more than at any time in the previous two decades, with the underground ivory trade becoming increasingly militarized.