Elephant Population As A Tragedy

Throughout history there have been many examples of tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is when people in a certain area over exploit a common resource which leads toa higher problem. Tragedy of the commons normally happens when people get greedy and get more than they really need. For example, if one farmer is public grazing area were to add a cow over the limit the field can sustain it won’t do much damage but if the other farmers also add another cow to the field it could end up harming it to the point where it is no longer usable.This comes to show that if even a single person becomes greedy it could ruin so many things for other people. Ideas will be pulled out from Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” to be used in this essay.

Explanation and Analysis: The human population is slowly moving into the Elephant's habitat and environment causing more conflict between humans and animals than ever before.

In “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell retold an occasion where he was struggling to come to a final decision of whether to shoot the elephant or not. With his final decision, the elephant finally lay dying in front of thousands of people. He said that he was forced to shoot it because the Burmese people were expecting him to do that. In addition, he also explained that he had to do it “to avoid looking like a fool” in front of the crowd (14). At first glance, one would think that it makes sense for him to kill the elephant to save his face, but that was not the case. He effectively uses this incident to demonstrate the “real nature of imperialism” (3), whereas the elephant represents the British Empire.

What is "the tragedy o the commons"? Explain how the concept might apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water pollution?

The official title of the world’s largest land dwelling animal belongs to the elephant, more specifically, the African elephant. Elephants also are some of the most deadly animals, which therefore increase the danger of human and elephant interactions. The more human interactions occur, the more deaths result, whether it is the elephant or the human who dies. These animals, surprisingly, are socially apt; their trunk is used for more than just eating and drinking- it is used for socializing. They are complex animals who live in large familial herds-females stay with their family throughout their entire lives while males only stay for approximately fifteen years (Elephant Protection, 1). Elephants possess a great memory and only forget what they learn occasionally and rarely, giving way to the “an elephant never forgets” saying (Maloiy, 178c). Despite how many people use the beloved saying, elephants may not be around much longer due to the shortened life span and increased mortality rates. Due to their incisor teeth, tusks, being extremely expensive and profitable, they are being murdered for the wealth they carry. This, coupled with the life span shortening because of malicious treatments and brutal practices reduces the life span of the African elephant from 56 to 16 years and the Asian elephant from 42 to 19 years (Elephant Protection, 1). According to what the statistics show, elephants may be following their ancestors to their death. Of the group of mammals called

“Tragedy of the Commons” means is a situation within a shared-resource structure where people act by themself without thinking about the common good used by others by depleting that resource through their action because of their own selfish gain.

We capture, contain, and control the very wildness of these animals, we so admire them for. We decorate a large bucket of water, or a box of bars to resemble a shallow shadow of the wilderness they should be in. These animals held captive in collective groups as a means to entertain us. We are trading the wonder of nature, seen in it’s own wilderness area for animal showmanship and entertainment. Losing the remarkable sensations of hope and renewal we experience, as we stand in a wilderness land, quietly observing animals and nature in the wildly beautiful and raw lands. The absence of our own lack of realization that nature and the wild places we call the wilderness are under attack. They are in danger of being beyond repair. It overwhelms the senses, and is not to be tolerated.

Because of the sale of illegal ivory so many elephants' lives are put at risk. If the poaching of elephants and ever-growing trade in illegal ivory is to be seriously addressed, part of the solution to this complex problem must be a return to the full ban on the sale of ivory established in 1989 (Bloody Ivory). Between 434,000 and 684,000 African savanna elephants in 18 countries remain, down 30% in the last seven years. Once again levels of poaching and illegal trade have spiraled out of control. Rates of poaching are now the worst they have been since 1989. There are no easy answers, but a total ivory trade ban is the one strategy we know has worked (Mary Rice). Hong Kong seized 779 elephant tusks three days into 2013, over a ton of ivory,

The Tragedy of the Commons and the Lorax bring to the people’s attention that a growing population that is growing as if there are infinite amount of resources will do severe damage to the environment. The Tragedy of the Commons was an essay written in 1968 by an American ecologist by name of Garret Hardin. Hardin explains in his essay that the Tragedy of the Commons is an economic problem in which every individual who tries to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. Then when demand for that particular resource surpasses the supply, every individual who consumes another unit of that resource will directly harm others who cannot reap the benefit as well. This particular economic problem is analogous to what happens in the movie The Lorax. The Lorax is about a greedy businessman known as Once-ler who shows up to a forest. Then cuts down all the trees to make his invention, while being chastised by a furry orange create known as the Lorax but he doesn’t listen. By the end of the movie there are no more trees and all the animals have lost their homes and Once-ler is poor again. The Lorax indirectly address the issue of the Tragedy of the Commons since it deals with the fundamental problem of unlimited needs and wants and limited resources.

Page 1 of 4 ZOOM The tragedy of commons is a critical occurrence that affects the environment adversely. The tragedy of the commons is the idea that one person’s single action may not be bad but many of the same actions over a short period becomes a problem. The Lorax is a great representation of the tragedy of commons. It presents the onceler coming to the area where the Lorax lives and destroying it too fast for it to regenerate.

In the essay “Shooting an Elephant” the central focus is that imperialism infringes on the rights of the people under its control. In the work one will see symbolic representations in each and every element in the story. The elephant, for example, represents the conflict that the policemen feels from fulfilling his duty. How the conflict is illustrated is through the actions of the elephant. The elephant starts off going on a rampage and destroying everything in site, much like the British do when they imperialized a place, and during this time the elephant kills a cow, which are considered sacred in India.

Animal hunting is not only inhumane but can also lead to the extinction of many species. In the essay “Our Animal Rites”, Quindlen asserts that it is “pathetic to consider the firepower” the hunters use in order to “bring down one fair-sized deer” (33). In this quote, she explains that the use of firepower by human to kill innocent animals is unfair and heartrending. Furthermore, Quindlen describes that even though the bears are killed by the “smiling” and triumphant hunters after the “three bear days in the autumn,” the bears look “more dignified than they do” (33). This suggests that hunting animals is not entertaining but rather unacceptable and disgraceful. Furthermore, many species can become extinct due to excessive hunting. In an ecology class, I learned that the extinction rate of species each year is approximately two hundred to two thousand each year. This is an extremely high and alerting rate since there is only around two million species that has been scientifically identified on the planet. In these examples, it can be concluded that the hunting of innocent animals is atrocious and

Elephants have been victims of not just the incessant poaching but also of the civil wars; ultimately making them to fight back. The killing case have gone over the roof, as the “singular perversity” (Siebert 353) of the attacks. In India, “nearly one thousand people have been killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004” (Siebert 353). Several frequent attacks were recorded in Africa and other villages where the denizens were forced to evacuate their houses. ‘nearly one thousand’ which accentuates the gravity of the situation in 4 years had gained a lot of attention from the elephants researchers. Seibert’s prime third perspective, Gay Bradshaw, Oregon State psychologist, claims that that “everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed” (Siebert 353). The choice of diction ‘dramatically’ indicates that elephants are not being violent towards human beings but they are also doing it intentionally. Dramatic behavior changes over the years are now being explained in the elephants. “Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma” (Siebert 354), due to “decades of poaching and habitat loss” (Siebert 354). Elephants are becoming more destructive and Bradshaw looked into combining “traditional research into elephant behavior with insights about trauma drawn from

If people imagine an elephant and a rider, chances are they would want the rider to take over the elephant, since the elephant takeover will cause a lot of chaos and destruction. In this unite the elephant and the rider will be used as a metaphor to compare our conscious and subconscious thoughts. The elephant will be compared to the unconscious part of our brain. This part of our brain is in the back, it is the part that develops first when we are in the womb. This part is the one that acts on instinct and emotion and it is the part that makes judgments and predictions. It is natural for all humans to make predictions and making predictions lead to making judgments. An example of that would be when we meet new people if the people are similar

“We are experiencing what is likely to be the greatest percentage loss of elephants in history,” said Richard G. Ruggiero, an official with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Ney York Times; December 3, 2012). The poaching of elephants started in the late 1800’s and is still happening today. People are slaughtering these majestic animals for their ivory tusks. Ivory has been sold on the black market for millions of dollars. Before the start of ivory poaching there were millions of elephants in the world in both Africa and India, but today because of the hunting for ivory, there are barely any of these giants left in the wild. Throughout history Europeans have been moving in on central African states to make