AFRICA  BOTSWANA  DUBA PLAINS GAME RESERVE-------------------------------- Elephants require a tremendous range area to graze, needing to eat several hundred pounds of food a day. They will often travel hundreds of miles to find adequate food and water to sustain their massive bodies. With the rapid increases of human population in Africa all the wildlife is ever more confined to smaller and smaller range areas. With the expansion and incursion of cities, towns, villages, farming and ranching, thousands of square miles are being cordoned off with electric fences. Range animals such as the Elephant, Zebra, Wildebeest, and Cape buffalo can no longer make the long migrations of several thousand miles that they are used to making for thousands of years. This problem creates food and water shortages for all the wildlife, as well as over grazing of a given area until there is no food sources left and little if any vegetation remains to regenerate. This problem is a trickle down issue for entire wildlife populations, affecting everything and everyone in the food chain from microorganisms to Elephants. Many areas that become over populated with wildlife will create a situation where all to die of starvation, confined and unable to find new ranges and water sources. In this image you can see the result of this human population cancer. When elephants are confined to smaller grazing areas they will feed till all the trees and vegetation are reduced to nothing but broken barren stalks within three or four feet of the ground. None of this vegetation will regenerate and they must move on to create the same problem in another area, leaving behind a desert for all. It is not the fault of the Elephants, they only do what they have always done, live and let live. When will mankind learn to do the same? Our greed and avarice sends countless species to oblivion each day that passes. There is no return from extinction it is the final statement. Like all the animals we share this planet with we are but another link in this chain of the nature of things. Later if not sooner nature will teach mankind this lesson in the error of his ways. Perhaps too late to save us all, the ark will have no passengers on that day.