60 Minutes Story (shortened transcript)
Reporter: Elizabeth Vargas
Producer: 20/20, ABC
ELIZABETH VARGAS (Reporter): For the elephant, the herd is home. It is family.
GAY BRADSHAW (Elephant Researcher): The herd is the most important component of elephant culture. They’re very affectionate with their children, with each other. Always touching and talking to each other. They have a culture that they pass on through generations. They even have grieving rituals – When someone in the family dies, people gather around. They touch the body. They come back days later, months later, even years later, to visit the body. They bring their children back to visit the body. So, essentially, a healthy, happy elephant is one where humans are not interfering in their lives.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: If elephants are wary of human encroachment, there is ample reason. The great African herds have been decimated over the last few centuries, hunted down for their ivory tusks. Experts say the trauma the surviving elephants carry with them is only now being fully understood. Particularly the youngest survivors, who often have the added trauma of being shipped off to zoos and circuses around the world. These are the lucky ones – the baby elephants that have survived the slaughter of their family’s herd and have been rescued.
DAPHNE SHELDRICK (Elephant Orphanage Founder): When they come in, newly orphaned, they have nightmares at night, they wake up screaming, they can’t sleep very well. They’re all psychologically disturbed.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Daphne Sheldrick has devoted her life to elephant well-being and survival. This is the elephant orphanage she runs in Nairobi, Kenya. The babies could never survive in the wild without the protection of the herd and without fresh milk. The keepers even sleep with the orphans at night, never leaving them alone, teaching them to trust again. To help the healing, they’re taught to play games like soccer to form new social bonds with each other.
DAPHNE SHELDRICK: When you actually raise them and you’re part of their family for 10 years, every day and every night, then you start to understand them. You must never, ever be cruel to an elephant because they have an amazing memory, and they will remember that for life. And they bear grudges.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Approximately 600 elephants live in captivity in the United States. Most were born in the wild and taken from their families and brought here to live or work in our zoos and circuses.
GAY BRADSHAW: Most of the elephants that we see have had a succession of very severe traumas. They have seen their family killed, or they have been taken away from their family. So, when science says elephants are just like people – they feel like people, they think like people, they act like people, they have a sense of self like people – it compels us not to treat them as property.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Many zoos and circuses treat their elephants very well. But in the best of circumstances these animals live lives of confinement. And performing elephants have often been trained brutally and aggressively.
GAY BRADSHAW: The kinds of beatings and the kinds of physical deprivation they’ve experienced is with them just like it would be a human being.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: These are the sounds of elephants talking to each other. The trumpeting and the low rumbling can be heard for miles over the countryside. This is The Elephant Sanctuary, and it’s not in Africa. It’s a 2,700-acre private reserve in rural Tennessee, just south of Nashville. It is a last refuge for abused or neglected elephants, where they come to live out their days and to heal.
CAROL BUCKELY (Elephant Sanctuary Founder): This place is for the welfare of elephants. This is not about people. They need to be in a safe place. They need to be out of environments where they’re abused.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Carol Buckley and Scott Blais have worked all their professional lives caring for elephants. And in 1995, they founded the sanctuary. The public is not allowed here, only the small staff that cares for the herd, knowing the risks they face. Every elephant here has a troubled history. Some have killed their keepers or trainers.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: To watch Carol and Scott with the elephants is remarkable. There is great affection and constant physical attention. Elephants need the touch. They love to have their tongues rubbed and they appear to be quite peaceful and happy to be back in the herd again, free to walk where they want. But they also carry deep scars. Sissy forever carries a tyre around that is a kind of security blanket that somehow makes her feel safer.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: What do you think the cure of the Sanctuary is?
CAROL BUCKELY: The elephants heal each other, and it’s family. It’s because they’re creating a family. They may not recover completely, but they will recover.
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[...] in an elephant refuge in Tennessee (I’ve previously posted about this very cool place. See Refuges for Elephants). Theirs is a friendship that looks past their major differences but also endures a tough time for [...]