“Why’s that?” Mike asked.
“Not all of the animals can survive outside all winter,” she said. “You can’t quite spot them from the air, but behind each of these areas, there are corrals where they get fed and spend the night. They’re sheltered when they need to be. That’s where their food is kept, too—apples and fruit and greens. All in the corrals.”
“What happened to the Skyfari?” Mike said.
“I remember that,” I said. “Trams like ski gondolas that carried us over the African plains. I was always terrified—when the high winds started to blow—that I’d wind up as lunch for one of the lions.”
“Another one of your misplaced fears, Coop,” Mike said.
“They’re out of service these last few years,” Hillary said. “Too many mechanical problems, and everyone loves the monorail even more.”
We had our own private monorail trip, high above the wide-open spaces that were home to an astounding variety of species. As promised, none were penned or restricted to small places. Each looked to be quite at home, and if there were fences around them, they were quite invisible to us.
Hillary provided the commentary as we cruised slowly on our trek. The rail car was open, too, so I asked Mike for his phone and started to photograph the animals. Mercer was writing down the details.
“The first thing you see below us are deer and antelope,” she said. “This part of the park encompasses more than thirty acres, so the designers were really able to re-create the habitats of their homes.”
“It looks like there are horses grazing with the deer,” Mercer said.
“There are. Mongolian wild horses. Stockier animals than the horses you know, with a short mane that looks like a Mohawk cut,” Hillary said.
“They’re so beautiful,” I said.
“They were believed to be extinct in the wild,” she said. “Then they were reintroduced a few years ago, and while endangered—though not from poaching—they seem to be coming back.”
Hillary directed the driver to stop anytime we came close to an animal we hadn’t seen before. There were gaurs—the world’s largest wild cattle—capable of killing lions because of their great size and fierce horns; several markhors—goats that were the national animal of Pakistan, with long, thick hair and fabulous antlers that curled up over their heads like corkscrews on steroids; Himalayan tahrs—ungulates that were somehow distantly related to wild goats; and hog deer, indigenous to different parts of Southeast Asia.
“Why are they called hog deer?” Mercer asked.
“Because they move like pigs—they’re shorter than the deer we know—and they actually put their heads down the way pigs do when they’re on the run,” Hillary said.
“Endangered?” I asked.
“Some of the species are, and some are doing okay—in India and Nepal and Bhutan,” she said. “But if you Google one of those Texas hunting preserves, they’re really a trophy animal down there, brought in to be bred in captivity—just to be hunted.”
Texas again. Another wild animal smuggled in for the sport of it.
“Can you please bring this train to a stop?” Mercer asked. He was leaning forward with his arms on the edge of the railing. He had spotted his favorite beasts—the elephants that were below us. I could see three of them, one of whom was rolling in the mud while the other two seemed not to care about our arrival.
“These were always the animals I came to see years ago,” he said. “But they, too, used to live behind bars back then.”
“We actually abandoned our elephant program more than a decade ago,” Hillary said, “in favor of devoting our resources to elephants in the wild.”
“But these elephants?” Mercer asked.
“You probably know that lady in the mud,” she said, smiling at Mercer. “Her name is Happy, and she’s about forty-five years old. I suspect you saw her when you were here as a kid.”
“Happy and Grumpy, if I’m not mistaken,” Mercer said. “Seven elephants from Thailand—babies when they were captured, if I remember right, and all of them named for Snow White’s dwarfs.”
“Exactly.”
“One of those things that sticks with you from childhood.”
“Well, it just seemed right to keep the three elephants who’d spent all their lives here with us till the end,” Hillary said. “They can live to be sixty or so. Fortunately, the circuses have stopped using them—the training always seemed to be so cruel—and now most zoos have given them up, too.”
“How come these three don’t have tusks?” Mike asked.
“That’s one of the differences between Asian and African elephants,” she said. “The African elephants, male and female, all have tusks. But only some of the Asian males have tusks and about half of the Asian females have short tusks. Tushes, actually, is what they’re called. Sort of like stunted tusks.”
“And endangered of course,” I said. “The Africans.”
“Critically so,” she responded. “Three-quarters of Africa’s forest elephants have been killed in the last dozen years. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them, in forests and on the savannas, too.”
We were silent.
“For their tusks,” I said.
“Pure human greed,” Hillary said. “It’s not the animals that are trafficked, as you know. They’re just slaughtered and their carcasses left to rot. Ninety-six elephants a day—that’s how many are being killed. Just for the trade in ivory.”
“Shot?” Mike asked. “Are most of them shot?”
“The poachers will get them any which way they can,” she said. “In villages where people can’t afford guns—in a country like Malawi—they literally inject chemicals into things the elephants eat, like pumpkins, and poison them to death. Or they ensnare them in wire traps.”
“What about the good people?” Mercer asked. “The locals who sign up to be wildlife rangers, to protect the animals?”
“Here’s what happens, Mercer. The poachers who are funded—some by rebel groups and some by businessmen—sneak into a wildlife preserve. First they kill the elephants and take the ivory,” Hillary explained, talking with both hands. “Then they spread poison on the carcasses to kill vultures attracted to the dead animals.”
“Otherwise the rangers might show up to stop them from stealing the tusks,” Mercer said.
“Dead-on,” she said. “By the time the rangers arrive, there’s no reason to stop the bad guys from killing them, too. The ivory is way too valuable.”
“So it’s the local governments who pay for rangers,” I said.
“Yes, and also with some of the funding from the WCS and AWB, and other conservation groups like them.”
“But that hasn’t done much to shut it down,” I said.
Hillary Hawes sat up and looked at me, realizing I missed her whole point. “It’s not a local problem, Alex. It’s a worldwide criminal enterprise.”