the conservation programs Eisenberg
pioneered there. He says many leading
Asian elephant researchers in the fi eld
today worked either with Eisenberg,
who died in 2003, or with one of the
people Eisenberg trained. One could
even say that conservation was part of
the mission of the National Zoo when
William Temple Hornaday founded it
in 1889 “for the preservation of species.”
Still, as late as the 1990s, Leimgruber
says there was a distinct group that
wanted to keep focusing on the actu-
al science of evolutionary biology and
leave conservation up to the lawmakers.
“It’s not really a useful debate,” says
Leimgruber, who grew up in a family of
foresters in Germany. “I would say ev-
erything we do is relevant to conserva-
tion, and we work very hard on fi guring
out how we translate it. It’s one thing
to do the research. But if that research
then isn’t translated into actions or pol-
icies or other things, then it’s useless.”
The young scientists who plan to de-
vote their careers to understanding el-
ephants say they’re optimistic. “We’re
looking at more of a holistic view of
how animals think and behave,” says
Venkatesh. “It’s still a very emerging
fi eld—addressing conservation prob-
lems from a behavioral perspective. But
I think it’s going to yield more eff ective
conservation eff orts in the long run. I’m
very hopeful.”
Chan remembers how inspired he was
when he fi rst started getting to know el-
ephants. “The sound and the presence
of them, and being close to something
that big in the wild, face to face is just—I
don’t know how to describe it. It’s some-
thing that can kill you. It’s right next to
you, but you don’t want to run away.” He
smiles and adds, “I love them.”
The future of elephants on this hu-
man-dominated planet really comes
down to that one rather unscientifi c
question: How much do we love them?
The poet John Donne famously wrote
that when one clod of dirt washes away,
the entire continent “is the less.” What
might ultimately save Asian elephants
is the knowledge that if these giant crea-
tures ever stop ambling across their con-
tinent—with their wise eyes, their dex-
terous trunks and their curious minds—
humanity will be the less for it.Daniel Steiger
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