Yesterday, WBUR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook has a superb discussion on the genocide of African elephants. The introduction notes:

The kill-off of elephants is getting worse. Humans are wiping them off the face of the earth, and scientists say the elephants know it.

Elephants appear to be not just grand but wise. Smart. Knowing. And right now they appear to know what the world is just not getting, despite all the bloody evidence: the elephants of Africa are being slaughtered on an epic scale.

A huge new study finds sixty-two percent vanished from the forests of Central Africa in the last decade. New industrial-strength poaching. Heavily-armed gangs mowing down and butchering these great, iconic, intelligent creatures for tusks and trinkets on an epic scale.

This hour, On Point: elephant genocide, and maybe – in our time – the end of elephants.

What makes this show remarkable is Ashbrook’s unmistakable moral outrage at this genocide. I do not know if he thinks in these terms, but he implicitly recognizes the intrinsic moral value of elephants and our consequent ethical obligations to their well-being. His anger is root not in elephants as a threatened resource or endangered biological heritage for humanity, but in what is being done to elephants themselves.

From an ethics and policy perspective, On Point discussions about animals are often disappointing. They generally reinforce uncritical and unreflective worldviews about humanity’s domination of non-human animals. It is a pleasure to hear Ashbrook break out of this mold, and introduce some ethical sensibilities into the discussion. I hope this continues and results in more explicit discussions of the ethics in animal related issues and public policy.

Image: Blood ivory, Speigel Online International.