By Sarah Sofiyyah
Imagine telling your children and grandchildren about endangered animals using photos and watching documentary videos on YouTube at your respective home while you got the chance to walk around the National Zoo to visit and experience it firsthand. How could you get once in a lifetime opportunity witnessing the authentic vibes of elephants, hearing the mighty trumpet from their trunks, but not your next generation?
Isn’t this act being selfish? Who do you blame for? The same goes for our jumbo friends. And they too have feelings!
The news about extinct species is everywhere: newspapers, television, radio and even social media. However, the news remains just news for people to read. Without taking any action, the number of threatened elephants will soon continue to slump.
The particular reason for this circumstance happened because of human materialism and business orientation that have caused over-harvesting and habitat loss. According to World Animal Foundation (2021), every 15 minutes, one elephant gets slaughtered by poachers to fuel the tremendous and lucrative illegal ivory trade.
However, it is not just poaching and shooting elephants that will cause extinction of elephants, significant number of them were also involved in road accidents in Malaysia.
Recently, another startling news was brought up on the Malaysian online news portal, Harian Metro, regarding mobile muscular, full-size Asiatic elephants. A female elephant perished after getting hit by vehicles at Batu Tujuh, Jalan Kota Tinggi-Mersing at midnight.
The Director of Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) in Johor, Salman Saaban, was reported to have said that at 12.15 a.m, their team received a report from local people on this matter and they went straight away to the location.
“According to an eyewitness, the incident took place about 11 a.m when a four-wheel drive vehicle crashed on the female elephant.”
“It made the elephant died on the spot as there were also other vehicles or trailer lorry involved in this accident,” Salman Saaban explained.
He stated that the elephant is from the Panti elephant group which consists of only 30 to 40 pachyderms in Johor.
Salman explained that the road is a hotspot for the herd to use for their destination. Hence, why do the elephants choose to use the highway or human path as their thoroughfare, and not using the inside of the rainforest where it is safer for them?
Not only that the elephants have the size of the truck body, they have remarkable characteristics compared to other animals. Elephants are intelligent and have incredible memories.
Researchers in their report titled “Elephants, Roads and Drivers: Case Study of Gerik-Jeli Highway” (2018) indicated that female elephants, in particular, remember the details of the landscapes which include the movement routes they have been using since their young age.
Thus, it makes sense why there are many elephants wandering around the highway and died after being struck by vehicles in Malaysia.
Human beings are the ones who have encroached and destroyed their natural habitat, and they have no other way to find their food, water, mates and shelter than using the same road. In consequence, it will spark the tension and conflict between humans and elephants.
Due to this reason, the news caught the spotlight of Malaysians on Twitter who expressed their despondency towards the carcass.
Despite most Malaysians were sad about this news, one of the tweets addressed “nampaknya kita tidak akan belajar apa-apa dari kejadian yang berulang kali berlaku”, in English it is translated as “we still do not learn any lessons from previous mistakes which have repeated many times.”
People are sick with these attitudes of some who have not learned a lesson from mistakes by letting these creatures die and allowing the wild elephants to live at risk.
Looking at this matter seriously, elephants are crucial creatures to be protected and preserved.
This owes largely to the fact that elephants are important in balancing the ecosystems and biodiversity of the valuable forest. As every elephants’ leftover footprints soon filled up with water, they could provide a place for other small animals such as tadpoles. Thus, elephants assist in ensuring an ecological balance be maintained.
On top of that, elephants play a vital role in ensuring sustainability of plants which provides a variety of food for human beings.
The new trees grow when elephants eat and swallow large seeds such as mangoes and defecate them. Their defecates are nutritious to the ecosystem, as it can lead to those trees to grow.
With the shrinking of the jungle to rampant logging and deforestation, it is a wake-up call for people to be aware and to take necessary actions.
Awareness and action should go in line together; if the attention is there, but no action is taken, it would be such a waste.
Although there is a government body like the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) in Peninsular Malaysia, as Malaysians, regardless of age, position, religion and ethnicity, we need to play our roles to protect our Asian elephants for the sake of successful conservation.
If it were not for our descendent, who could make this change? The future depends on us. Otherwise, in years to come our jumbo friends can be seen only on television screens and in history books.***
(This article is written as part of the individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)