Poachers Leaving Elephant Orphans

60 Minutes: Special Elephant Orphanage Cares For Poachers' Youngest Victims

(CBS)  This story was first broadcast on Dec. 21, 2008. It was updated on April 23, 2009.

Can you imagine an orphanage that's a happy place? 60 Minutes couldn't, but then we found one. The kids don't arrive here smiling. Like orphans all over the world, they've been abandoned. They're hungry, sad and desperate. But after a few years, they're healthy, well-fed and happy.

As correspondent Bob Simon reports, this orphanage is for elephants, located outside Nairobi, Kenya. They've been orphaned because their parents - their mothers mainly - have died, or more likely, been killed in the bush.

Poachers kill large elephants for their ivory. A young elephant can only survive a day or two without milk. So, the orphanage's first job is to find the orphans, fly them to the orphanage, and, before anything else, feed them.

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The principal of the orphanage, head mistress, head nurse and CEO, is Dame Daphne Sheldrick. She founded the place and has been working with elephants for 50 years.

"This is little Saguta. This is the one that was in a coma," she told Simon. "When she arrived, was on a drip for 24 hours. We never thought she'd be alive in the morning. So she's our little miracle, this one."

But Daphne's problem is that she is caring for too many miracles: poachers are killing more and more elephants for their tusks, and in the process creating more and more orphans.

There are a record number of orphans at the orphanage right now because Daphne says the sale of ivory has been legalized for the first time in ten years. A few African countries have been given the right to sell their stockpiles - more than 100 tons of tusks to China and Japan - and conservationists point out that this is yet another blow to the elephants.

Asked if she sees any correlation between the decision to auction off the ivory and the number of orphans, Daphne said, "We do. Every time ivory is auctioned legally, there's a rise in poaching. And we also see the correlation in the price that's paid to the poacher for illegal ivory."

And that price has gone up. "It's gone from 300 shillings a kilo to 5,000," she explained.

That's about $1,000 a tusk here in Kenya, where the sale of any ivory is still prohibited. Yet the number of elephants killed by poachers this year has increased by 45 percent.

Daphne says it's a scary, frightening rise.

Poachers were behind the death of one elephant whose trunk was caught in one of their snares and she had no way of feeding herself or her six-week-old baby boy. He just couldn't accept the fact that his mother was dead, so he continued trying to suckle. Eventually the keepers got him to drink their milk. They called him Shimba. He was in such bad shape that nobody thought he would survive.

But then Shimba was brought to the orphanage and things started going his way. He's 27 months old now, and he's in very good shape. He's very strong, very muscular, and his tusks are beginning to grow. He never stops eating.

In fact, that is the first love of every one of Dame Daphne's orphans - eating.

The institution has a dining area and that's not all: as 60 Minutes found out when we first dropped by three years ago, it has everything you'd want in an orphanage. There are dormitories - each orphan has a private room. There is also a communal bath and a playground. The regimen at the orphanage is anything but Dickensian. Unlike Oliver Twist, when one of these orphans asks for more, that's what he gets - more.

Ultimately, Daphne finds elephants more sympathetic than people.

Asked what the most extraordinary things is she has learned about elephants, she told Simon, "Their tremendous capacity for caring is, I think, perhaps the most amazing thing about them, even at a very, very young age. Their sort of forgiveness, unselfishness. So you know, I often say as I think I've said before, they have all the best attributes of us humans and not very many of the bad."

[lunacapra]

It seems to me that radical solutions may be necessary to protect the elephants being slaughtered for their ivory. My suggestion is to have the appropriate foundation find the herds that are at risk, sedate the elephants, remove the ivory tusks and immediately replace them with a manmade orthotic which will maintain the elephant's ability to use the tusks as they would the ivory tusks. With the ivory removed from the equation, the poacher is out of business and the adult elephants can go on with their lives. The acquired ivory can then be sold to support the perpetuation of this and other missions.

the BBC London did a long series on this Orphanage last year showing the day to day life of the Elephants over a year or so. Well worth watching if you can but not good news. Try the BBC iplayer

[mcgh]

I'm 45 y/o and I watch 60minutes but I am getting frustrated with the "old fashion" thinking the show has! People want to help, they just don't know how to help! Help us help the elephants...give us a website...give us a letter on your website to send in opposition to the sale of ivory. Update your show so people can get involved!!! How old are the people running this show???? Get someone in there who can bring the show up to date!!! I'm tired of watching you tell the stories and then leave us with no way to help.
You do all the research on the show, you have to know how we can help...TELL US!!!!

[tuxcats]

Hi, Time and time again I have emailed 60 Minutes and other such news programs to PLEASE include a tag at the end of such pieces to refer people to the website for the organization that they have spotlighted. So many people are not aware of these organizations and once they have watched such a program they are moved so by what is being done to help these animals that they want to help and like last nights program there was no tag saying this is how you can help Dame Daphne help the orphans by mentioning their website.

http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

I can speak from personal experience. I was lucky enough to visit the orphanage in 2004. I had read about it and made sure when I went on my East African safari to arrange to be taken there to see for myself the wonderful work they do. Anyone can schedule a visit, watch the baby ele's frolick in the mud, bump into you as they walk by, blow into their trunks. It is an amazing place doing such difficult work saving these babies with such loving care. You just want to hug them all and tell them it will be OK with all these wonderful keepers taking care of them as if they were their children.

I now "foster" a baby ele and you can as well. What a wonderful gift it makes for any child or adult with a love for these magnificent creatures. You get monthly orphan updates on how your and other orphaned baby eles are doing. It's better than any soap opera all the antics that go on between the babies and who likes to hang out with who and who causes trouble. It's just like reading about kids at preschool. They have such human like traits. What a great lesson for children to get a foster ele as a gift to be able to read about their foster baby every month. It's one way I keep my African experiences alive by reading about these guys along with the other things I'm connected to there.

Dame Daphne was there when I visited so I personally thanked her for her wonderful work. These ele's are her life. And yes she really does wear the little floral dresses. That was not "dress up" for the cameras :)

60 Minutes----please take note of all the comments asking how they can help and consider giving people this info at the end of segments like these. You can really help make a difference by giving people the info how to help. They are so overwhelmed with babies right now and need every bit of money they can raise. Just think if everyone watching gave a few dollars how much it would help!!!!!!!!

We also need to put pressure on to make the selling of Ivory illegal around the world. We have done so before. I'm not sure how/why it changed.

Every single one of us can make a difference, however small. It takes just one person to raise their voice, and another, and another. Pretty soon it's a massive effort stared from just one voice.

"You must be the change you want to see in the world" -------Mahatma Gandhi-----

Everyone should sponsor a baby ele.......!!!!!!!

[no_nonesense]

I saw this story the first time CBS ran it, and it is worthy of repeating. It's the kind of story involving animals , in the hands of humans, that should be told and retold.

Regardless, it does not mitigate or soften the horrors of your previous week's serving of horrendous animal cruelty by torture and methodical killing of bulls at the hands of Draconian macabre killers who, through tradition, can call themselves "bull fighters." BULL! It's animal torture, pure and simple.

I'm still seething about it, and, like the elephant, I won't forget!

[ShaoNT]

60 Minutes please read this:

I can help! I suggest to show this piece in school all over China and Japan where the ivory is in demand. Children are most innocent and full of sympathy. If they learn how the baby elephans become orphans because their parents and grandparents are paying a high price to buy their ivory, they will help educate their parents and grandparents to stop this demand. In China at least, the "one-child policy" has made the children a very powerful force influencing their parents. When my son was in grade school in China, he learned how the use of paper kills trees and, he refused to write me holiday cards because he wanted to save trees.

To show this piece in school also will make sure that the next generation of Chinese and Japanese will not want to use ivory.

I can help translate the piece into Chinese and make connections to show it in China. So please contact me. Only by exhuasting the deman will we make a difference in stopping the killing of baby elephans.

[ctebben]

What a sad story about the poached elefants. What can we do to get the laws turned aroung re: legal selling of tusks?
How can I help this amazing orphanage?

[ram19491]

www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/ This is a address to find out more about the seldrick trust. Thank you for this wonderful story among so many sad ones. ram19491

[animal-lover]

i am 15, from Wisconson, & i would like to know more about saving these great animals & how to contact this amazing woman.

[Ollind]

60 minutes please let the world know how we can all help to stop this abuse. How can we help?.