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Natumi, Icholta, Ilingwesi, Nyiro, Lolokwe, Salama, Laikipia, and Edie—eight orphaned baby elephants who collectively became known as the “Orphan 8”—form the basis of Gerry Ellis’s delightful book Wild Orphans. Ellis uses over 100 of his brilliant color photos to depict the early development of these babies, from rescue through rehabilitation to release in the wild. Baby elephants may be orphaned when their mothers are gunned down by poachers’ bullets, when they are deemed “problem” animals, or when they inadvertently get stuck in wells or other watering holes. The lucky survivors are taken to Dr. Daphne Sheldrick’s Wildlife Trust orphanage outside Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where they most lovingly are cared for around the clock. Dr. Sheldrick notes in her Foreword to the book that “elephants are worthy of, and need, human compassion and understanding,” and “that they must be handled with sensitivity and care rather than brutality.” 
The youngest child or the most learned scientist should appreciate Ellis’s heart-warming pictures and simple accompanying text, which tell a story of utter compassion. When they arrive, elephant babies may be emotionally distressed, physically injured, dehydrated, sunburned, or cut by snares. The caretakers at the orphanage show what Ellis simply describes as “endless patience” in caring for them. The elephants’ human adoptive parents play with them (physical contact for which the elephants yearn) and introduce them to the shallow pools that provide them with a welcome, cooling mud bath. The babies’ surrogate mothers feed them milk from a bottle hidden behind a blanket draped between the trees, thus emulating the feeling of being under a mother’s body while drinking. The caretakers even sleep alongside their elephantine children, waking with them often throughout the night. Ultimately, the orphans reach an age that they can be released to the wilds of Tsavo National Park. Ellis returned to see “his” elephants in Tsavo nearly a year after their release and greeted them with the astonishment of a human parent: they were heavier—some 200 pounds rounder—and had begun sprouting their precious ivory tusks. Ellis notes: “When I saw Natumi with her thumb-size tusks poking out from her upper jaw, I felt the joy a parent must feel when their child sheds baby teeth for those of adulthood.” Of course, these “adult teeth” put elephants at great peril across Africa. The ivory trade cut the continent-wide elephant population in half leading up to the 1989 decision by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to protect elephants and stop the international commercial ivory trade. Ellis is acutely aware that elephants are still under the gun by ivory poachers: “But it is Natumi’s new tusks that worry me most about her future. As she matures and those elegant sweeping tusks grace her profile, their price tag will grow to a bounty of several hundreds or thousands of dollars. Although Tsavo is protected, poaching still goes on within the park. Only the vigilant refusal of people around the world to buy ivory offers her any true security.” |
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