Obituary of Lawrence Anthony from The Telegraph UK, dated 3/8/12:
Lawrence Anthony, who has died aged 61, was a South African conservationist, known as “The Elephant Whisperer”, and made world headlines in 2003 when he arrived in war-torn Baghdad to rescue the animals in Saddam Hussein’s zoo…
In his native South Africa, Anthony was a key figure in promoting the concept of joining tribal lands to game reserves in order to give remote tribal communities a vested interest in conservation. As well as creating two new African game reserves, he ran a private reserve of his own where he acquired his nickname after rescuing a herd of rogue elephants destined to be shot.
In 2003, as Anthony watched television footage of the bombardment of Baghdad, he recalled reading that the city had the largest zoo in the Middle East: “I couldn’t stand the thought of the animals dying in their cages. I contacted the Americans and the British and said, ‘You have any contingency plans?’ Nobody was interested.”
Within days he was on the Kuwait-Iraq border, in a hired car packed with veterinary supplies. The Americans refused to let him cross, but Kuwaiti border guards allowed him through and, with two Kuwaiti zoo workers, Anthony joined the tanks and convoys heading to Baghdad…
With a handful of helpers, Anthony began the urgent work of rescuing the surviving animals…Within weeks American and even Iraqi soldiers were putting down their weapons and mucking in: “We had Republican Guard soldiers working with American troops in the zoo two weeks after they were killing each other on the battlefield,” Anthony recalled. Local mullahs instructed their followers that Anthony and his team should be left unmolested.
He worked in Baghdad for six months, during which time he transformed the fate of the zoo. By the time he left, the surviving animals were healthy, the cages clean and the zoo a viable operation once again…
You can read the full story about Lawrence’s mission to save the Baghdad Zoo animals in his book, Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo.
Elephants had never been part of Anthony’s plan for [his South African game reserve] Thula Thula, but in 1999 he was telephoned by a conservation organisation which asked whether he would be willing to take on a herd of nine animals which had escaped from every enclosure they had ever been in, wreaking havoc across KwaZulu-Natal, and were considered highly dangerous. Realising that the elephants would be shot if he declined, Anthony agreed to give them a home.
“They were a difficult bunch, no question about it,” he recalled. “Delinquents every one. But I could see a lot of good in them too. They’d had a tough time and were all scared, and yet they were looking after one another, trying to protect one another.”
Anthony decided to treat the elephants as errant children, working to persuade them, through words and gestures, that they should not behave badly and that they could trust him. He concentrated his attention on Nana, the matriarch of the herd: “I’d go down to the fence and I’d plead with Nana not to break it down,” he said. “I knew she didn’t understand English, but I hoped she’d understand by the tone of my voice and my body language what I was saying. And one morning, instead of trying to break the fence down, she just stood there. Then she put her trunk through the fence towards me. I knew she wanted to touch me. That was a turning point.” Soon they were allowed out into the reserve.
Days after Nana gave birth to a son, she emerged from the bush to show off the newborn to her human friend. A few years later, after Anthony’s first grandchild was born, he returned the compliment, though he recalled that it was some time before his daughter-in-law would speak to him again.
He told the story of the elephants in The Elephant Whisperer, My Life With The Herd In The African Wild (2009, also co-written with Graham Spence).
Lawrence Anthony’s The Elephant Whisperer: Learning about Life, Loyalty and Freedom from a Remarkable Herd of Elephants is also available, but only in hard copy. All of Anthony’s books are rated 4.7 – 5 out of 5 stars and continue to top the bestseller lists on Amazon even months after this remarkable, compassionate man’s death. Animal lovers, armchair naturalists and veterans are sure to enjoy his books.