Giant Steps: A true story from Africa about exploitation and the meaning of freedom, by Richard Peirce

Giant Steps: A true story from Africa about exploitation and the meaning of freedom, by Richard Peirce. Penguin Random House South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa 2016. ISBN 99781775843306 / ISBN 978-1-77-584330-6

Giant Steps: A true story from Africa about exploitation and the meaning of freedom, by Richard Peirce. The author presents the individual narratives of two elephants and the twists and turns of their fortunes.

Richard Peirce  

Giant Steps is the true story of two African elephants - Bully and Induna. Both elephants were orphans, and one has been much luckier in his life than the other. Their story involves happiness and sadness, cruelty, deprivation, and the loss of their natural lives. Researching Giant Steps brought me face to face with some awkward questions; in days gone by when elephants were culled, was it right to spare the babies? Is it ever defensible to train such intelligent animals and keep them in captivity? Should elephants be kept in captivity at all? Will ivory poaching be stopped before elephants, and many other animals, become extinct in the wild? I have tried to use the story of Bully and Induna to ask pertinent questions and look for answers. Researching their life stories has involved an extraordinary journey, which has reinforced to me what amazing animals elephants are; to think of one elephant being killed every 15-20 minutes by poachers doesn't just send a shiver down my spine, it makes me very angry. The picture of Bully or Induna lying dead with their head in a pool of blood, and with their tusks hacked out is the stuff of nightmares; and the nightmare is happening at the rate of nearly 100 elephants a day. Africa without its wildlife wouldn't be Africa as the world knows it. I hope that humans can follow in Bully and Induna's giant steps, and win the struggle to conserve Africa's remaining wildlife before it has disappeared forever from the continent's wild places.

Preface by Jacqui Peirce

Apart from the day-to-day challenges of living in the wild, the main problem elephants face is that they share the planet with an ever-increasing, greedy, and out of control human race. Physically, humans are nothing like elephants; however, mentally, we resemble each other closely. Elephants show affection, mourn their dead, communicate using a large vocabulary, possess long memories, have highly developed brains, and live in groups with defined social structures. Doubtless elephants will survive as exhibits in zoos and game parks, but it remains to be seen whether we will allow them the space to continue to live as truly wild animals. At the moment the demand from China and south-east Asia for ivory and other wildlife products seems insatiable. Nevertheless, every wildlife campaigner hopes this demand can be reduced and reversed. What seems impossible to reverse is human population expansion. In the end, the question will probably be, is the planet big enough for both humans and wild elephants? On today's evidence the answer is likely to be no. It will be a terrible tragedy if this magnificent and intelligent animal is reduced to being peered at as a curiosity in zoos and game parks.

This is an excerpt from Giant Steps: A true story from Africa about exploitation and the meaning of freedom, by Richard Peirce.

Title: Giant Steps
Subtitle: A true story from Africa about exploitation and the meaning of freedom
Author: Richard Peirce
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Imprint: Struik Nature
Cape Town, South Africa 2016
ISBN 9781775843306 / ISBN 978-1-77-584330-6
Softcover, 14 x 19 cm, 160 pages, throughout colour photographs