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BOUT SIX WEEKS LATER, it was time for me to leave Iraq. It was time to go homeâback to Africa.
The zoo was now under the control of the Iraqis and I was confident they would do a good job. Brendan would stay on for as long as necessary to help with the day-to-day running and provide practical know-how where needed. He would also accompany Dr. Adel and key staff on trips to other zoos, to show the Iraqis how modern menageries were run.
The good-byes were both emotional and dignified. Every zoo worker came to shake my hand; we had been through a lot together. Sumner was also there. We clasped each other 's hands hard and promised to keep in contact.
I looked around to see if Husham had magically appeared. I really wanted to say good-bye to the brave Iraqi who had been with me from the start, but no one had seen or heard of him for weeks.
Brendan drove me to the Four-Headed Palace, where I would catch a convoy-escorted bus to run the gauntlet to Baghdad Airport.
“It's been fun ⦠well, most of the time,” he said, punching me lightly on the shoulder.
I laughed. “Sure has.”
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IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when I arrived back at Thula Thula. The lush African wilderness was like a balm after the harsh desert landscapes that had been my home for the past six months.
That evening my elephants came up to the house to visit, as they always do when I return from a trip. I went out to greet them. They were in beautiful condition, their gray coats pulsing with health.
The babies were growing fast and Nana and Frankie pushed them forward to show them off.
“I've missed you, my girls.”
Françoise called me. She said Brendan was on the phone from Baghdad.
I rushed back inside.
“They've killed the tiger. Malooh is dead,” Brendan said, his voice echoing in the receiver.
“What?”
“Yeah. Some American soldiers got drunk at the zoo and a couple wandered around the cages. Then one brain-dead moron struck his hand in the tiger's cage, obviously freaking it out. So Malooh bit the guy's finger off and mauled his arm. His friend pulled out a nine-millimeter and shot the tiger. Malooh slowly bled to death overnight without us even knowing. We only found out in the morning.”
Then Brendan, who seldom raises his voice, suddenly shouted over the phone. “That beautiful cat was in a cage! It couldn't have gone anywhere! It couldn't have run off! And those fucking drunk bastards killed it!”
A picture of the majestic Bengal tiger flashed through my mind. He was my favorite animal. When I mused alone on the futility of everything, I often found him looking at me and I took comfort from his presence. He was our most stressed animal, just fur and
rib cage when we arrived, and we fought long and hard for his life. We nurtured him daily. We searched the streets of Baghdad to find donkeys to feed him, and we lugged water from the canals to slake his thirst. We did all we could to ease his torment. Toward the end we succeeded.
Now he was dead. Shot by drunken cretins who put their hands in the cage of a wild animal.
I put the phone down.
This fight for the planet is not over. Not by a long way.
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I DIDN'T SLEEP MUCH that night, and when I did I woke with the image of that beautiful tiger engraved on my mind. Just as Marjan, the Kabul Zoo lion, had been a spur to my trip to the Baghdad Zoo, Malooh, the Bengal tiger, would become iconic for me in a far wider sense.
Had it all been in vain? Had a drunken imbecile who put his arm in a wild animal's cage undone all our successes achieved in the direst conditions imaginableâin a war zone? Was the symbolism just too stark, that no matter what you do, someone will just come along and undo it? Was it always other creatures that had to pay for man's follies with their lives?
The next morning I went for a long walk in the wilds and reflected on the amazing adventures of the past half year. One thing stood out; The beautiful tiger's pointless death was our only casualty. Since I had arrived in Baghdad and found those pitiful, starving, thirst-crazed survivors in their filthy cages, not one other animal had died. Against the odds, we saved them all. The tiger had been the first fatality, but not through any fault of the Babylon's Ark team.
Slowly I started to put it all in perspective. By saving the Baghdad Zoo at least we had set an example that no one could take away from us.
Although the bitter gall still burned my gut, I began to feel a little better, and I remembered all those who had helped us in this
once seemingly hopeless quest: soldiers, civilians, life-threatened zoo staff, and volunteers who cared enough to do something about a handful of criminally neglected, dying creatures.
I thought of the elite Special Forces, the frontline soldiers who in the thick of war risked their lives to find food for Uday's lions. It was certainly no easy task searching among flying bullets for meat every day.
I remembered Lieutenant Szydlik and his soldiers who would toss their own rations into the starving animals' cages; and Capt. Larry Burris and his men from the Third ID who gave me protection, a place to sleep, water and food, and transport to Al Zawra Park.
I recalled how ordinary soldiers would arrive at the zoo on their own accord to ask if we were okay and how they could help ⦠the unknown soldier who out of the blue gave me a generator, the sergeant who “loaned” me batteries for the water pumps, the “mercenaries” who regularly came around to check that we were safe.
There were many others, such as the CPA chief of staff, Pat Kennedy, a man with huge responsibilities who always made time for me when I needed to discuss something, squeezing me in somewhere in his tight schedule.
And, of course, my Iraqi friends, Adel, Husham, and the zoo staff, who are the true heroes of this story, men who risked their lives daily to come to work in an incredibly hostile environment where to be seen cooperating with Westerners was often a death sentence. It is difficult to record in mere words their absolute courage.
I then thought back on my first walk around the Baghdad Zoo. At first, I had been so dismayed by what I saw that I genuinely considered whether shooting each animal would be the most humane thing to do.
Today I can still scarcely believe it. I had never seen animals in such dreadful condition. Even worse, that harrowing initial scenario was soon surpassed by the brutality and squalor of Luna Park and other private menageries we found. Nothing but nothing could have prepared me for those hellholes. It is a terrible indictment
against the human race that it's possible for such places of brutality to exist. The Baghdad Zoo experience certainly altered my perception of my own species and inexorably pushed me to explore in more depth mankind's near-suicidal relationship with the plant and animal kingdoms. The most crucial lesson I learned in Baghdad was this: If “civilized” man is capable of routinely justifying such blatant abuse of trapped wildlife, what of the other unseen atrocities being inflicted on our planet?
We already know that an extraordinary extinction of species is taking place all over the world, breaking vital links in the chain of life.
We are aware that most large-fish species, including cod, marlin, swordfish, and tuna, are critically endangered, and huge dead zones are appearing in our oceans, silent places devoid of life.
It is no secret that massive tracts of wild places and habitat are vanishing forever, taking countless animals, birds, and insects with them. Most of the planet's rivers and streams no longer function naturally, and many coral reefs and mangrove swamps, the priceless breeding grounds for aquatic life, have started dying off.
It's a cold fact of life that factory farming, where untold numbers of stressed animals are squashed into tiny pens, is the “new agriculture,” and our insatiable demand for space is denuding nature of its support systems, the same life systems we depend upon for our own survival.
We know, too, that Earth's life-giving environment is under direct threat. The very air we breathe is being altered by billions upon billions of tons of poisonous gases that are pumped into the atmosphere each year. Many of our best scientists say these gases, which are also capable of trapping the sun's heat, are causing global warming, changing weather and climate patterns, melting glaciers, and perhaps even thawing the polar ice caps.
It is, quite frankly, a litany of disasters, and if that's all common knowledge, I shudder to think of what must be happening without our knowing.
It took billions of years for nature to develop dynamic, viable
relationships between Earth and its countless life-forms. Now, in just over a hundred years, these natural balances are threatening to fall irrevocably out of kilter. We are witnessing firsthand a massive disruption of Earth's life systems, and all fingers point to one culprit:
man
.
For the first time, Mother Nature has real competition. Our ability to transform the environment is second only to Nature herself, and we have been brutally imposing our newfound technological dominance on a long since conquered and now overwhelmed natural world.
In our ruthless quest for technology, material wealth, and scientific progress, the humanities have been sorely neglected. And, as most of us are almost completely ignorant of the character and function of other forms of life, we abuse the natural world and diminish once-robust survival systems without any real understanding of the consequencesâespecially for our own continued existence.
Why do we so willingly inflict harm on the only home we have? Most people intrinsically have empathy with nature. Everybody I speak to is against cruelty to animals; everybody wants fresh air, open spaces, unpolluted rivers, and a healthy livable planet. So why do we so dreadfully abuse our sole life-support system?
The answer to that is fundamental to our survival as a species.
The basic common denominator of all life is the urge to survive, and the survival of life on Planet Earth is achieved only as a shared initiative with and through all life-forms. Life is a joint effort; none survives alone. There is no other way. We are all in this game of life together. There is no divide, no “us” and “them”; no “man” separate from “nature.” Homo sapiens as individuals and as a species are as much a part of life's overall thrust for survival as any other species. As living organisms, we are all part of the greater whole, and as such, we are embodied with exactly the same fundamental purpose: to survive. And to do soâas individuals, families, groups, and as a speciesâwe have to live in dynamic collaboration with the plant and animal kingdoms in a healthy, life-sustaining environment.
There is no greater imperative. Mankind's superior intellect and deep spiritual heritage will count for naught if we fail in this quest. Life will simply pass us by as we succumb to our own devices, and more successful life-forms will evolve to replace us. The fate of uncountable species that have already disappeared into oblivion after inhabiting, sometimes dominating, the Earth for millions of years bears stark testimony to this. And we are not immune.
On the contrary, all the evidence is that we are extremely vulnerable. A report published in London's
Guardian
newspaper in March 2005 backed by 1,350 scientists stated that “Two-thirds of the world's resources are now used up,” and “recent studies show that human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”
This report is complemented by the insightful words of respected environmentalist and Catholic monk Thomas Berry, who said, “Mankind has a sense of homicide and genocide, but no apparent sense of homicide or geocide, the killing of life, or the killing of the Earth itself.”
These and many other similar observations by environmental experts reveal a fundamental overestimation of the capability of the Earth to continue to sustain life as we know it. The systematic degradation of the plant and animal kingdoms and the environment absolutely staggers me. And if you still have any doubt about what is going on, fly over the African rain forests as I have just done and see for yourself the deforestation, slash and burn, and uncontrolled human intrusion into these precious areas; or follow my paths through the Asian subcontinent, where untold millions living in miserable poverty suffocate the land with human waste; or into Eastern Europe, where children cough persistently from pollution; or the Middle East, where animal rights are all but nonexistent. If you can't travel, use the Internet. I must warn you: Prepare yourself for a shock for all is decidedly not well.
It seems incomprehensible that in the face of this planet-wide tragedy the authorities continue to apply ridiculous industrial
terms such as “resource takeup” or “demand utilization” to living, breathing wildlife or wild lands, of which we are an integral part, and upon which we are so utterly dependent for our own survival.
I, for one, have never felt a need to accept the status quo, or pay homage to the authorities. We are laying waste to the natural world and, in the main, the authorities, secular and nonsecular, are conspicuous by their absence of imperative, rational initiative to correct this.