It is my understanding that the Botswana Wildlife Department and the local landowners' association granted permission to animal dealer Riccardo Ghiazza, director of African Game Services in South Africa, to capture the elephants and to sell them to foreign buyers. The youngsters were immobilised and the adults were chased away with helicopters. The captured babies were then transferred by road to South Africa, where some are being held in a converted warehouse near Hartebeespoort Dam. Another 20 baby elephants are to be captured in the near future. But the capture of free- ranging baby elephants, taken forcibly from their mothers, does raise ethical questions.
Elephants are complex, highly intelligent social mammals.
The more I learn about them, the more I am persuaded they have minds. They may not have minds like ours, but minds nonetheless. And this is where I believe the capture of baby elephants is on slippery moral ground. We do, however, have mountains of data, notebooks full of incredible anecdotes and enough scientific knowledge to make us distinctly uncomfortable about assuming elephants don't have minds. And until we know more, the ethical course is to err on the side of over-attribution.