South Africa Has Too Many Elephants

[moe4eyed]

So reports The New York Times, anyway. Apparently, there's a very real chance that they'll have to start killing the excess animals to prevent future destruction caused by large herds.

Around the ol' Reserve Room (my current place of employment, for those not up on their Jack-ellanea), the article raised a number of questions:

• Is it right to kill innocent creatures now to prevent possible future problems?
  
• If you could eat elephant meat, would you?
  
• What if the elephant died of natural causes?
  
• How about those elephant-foot umbrella holders? Why don't you see those around any more?
  
• If the United States had 5,000 elephants lying around and decided to kill them and sell their ivory (and also meat and feet) and then use the money to fund universal health care, would that be OK?
  
• If you were a poacher and you were to come upon Babar, king of the elephants, would you be more likely to let him go, because he walks upright and wears a smart green suit, or more likely to kill him, because in addition to the ivory you can take his gold crown?

Related links: For a different take on animal preservation, consider this Slate article about the difficulty of protecting the ugly animals. George Orwell shot an elephant once, as you may have learned in school. Hey, remember when Bart got an elephant?