Chhouk the elephant was caught in a poacher's trap in Cambodia.
Animal activist Nick Marx came to the animal's rescue, nursing the creature back to health. He also replaced his mangled foot with a prosthetic piece. Although the animal will never be able to go back into the wall, the elephant can have a peaceful existence.
Still, Marx's attachment to the elephant borders on disturbing:
"I stayed with him, slept beside him, hand-fed him everything he ate.”
I wish that mankind would exhibit that kind of tender loving care to one another.
This article was written in the context of the widespread poaching trade, which is close to rivaling the illicit drug trade ravaging Mexico. A free-market solution would preserve the dwindling numbers of endangered species like Chhouk the elephant. If nations would permit endangered animals to be raise like livestock and farmed accordingly, their numbers would augment quickly.
Compassionate stories do stir the hears of readers, for so long beset with headlines declaring economic woes and horrific inhumanity to man. At the same time, small-time sympathy does not create long-term solutions to economic and political problems which impoverish many.
If the Cambodian government spent more time relaxing strict trade rules and regulations and promoted political liberty for her people, they would not have to fend off poachers with greater encroachments of the state.
Rather than policing the poaching trade, South East Asian countries ought to promote free markets, open trade, and liberal policies for their own people.
Not just for the animals, how about more compassion from governments for their own people?