The date is March 20, 2003. Spurred on by intelligence reports of hidden weapons of mass destruction, U.S. armed forces, accompanied by those of Britain, Poland and Denmark, begin the invasion of Iraq. Along with the entire world, a man named Lawrence Anthony watches from his South African home.
But Anthony’s viewpoint is not the same as ours—he is greatly concerned over the fates of hundreds of animals trapped inside the Baghdad Zoo. Knowing what became of zoos in other war-torn areas such as Afghanistan, Kuwait and Yugoslavia—where the animals were annihilated or died from abandonment and starvation—he is particularly concerned because this zoo is the largest in the Middle East.
It isn’t the first time he has had such concerns—and acted upon them. A few years earlier, he learned that a troublesome herd of seven elephants in his native South Africa were turning over trucks and threatening villagers. Because they were totally wild, if anyone were to come too close, these elephants would charge and kill. The only solution anyone seemed to be able to come up with was for the entire herd to be put down, as they were too dangerous to have in a national park where tourists, game wardens and indigenous populations were at serious risk.
These “killer” elephants—whom no one had been able to approach—now live on Anthony’s Thula Thula game reserve and eat peacefully right out of his hands.
The Elephant Rescue
The reason for the elephants’ raging behavior very well could lie in the way they were treated. They originally came from two different herds—three from one, and four from another—which had had their numbers trimmed dramatically by hunting or capture. An elephant’s death is a cataclysmic event within its herd; the remaining elephants mourn the loss of one member for years to come. Multiply that by the numbers in the case of these two herds, and the behavior of the surviving members comes as no surprise.
Once finally contained, it took very careful measures to even feed the hostile pachyderms, and Anthony knew he had his work (which many “experts” would not have even undertaken) cut out for him. He decided to place himself in the vicinity of the animals 24 hours a day, as they could not risk another escape; local game wardens had threatened to kill them if there was another incident.
It was the beginning of the turning point. During this long stay, which ended up lasting three weeks, Anthony observed that at 4:45 every morning the elephants would line up in front of the fence facing their old home ground 800 kilometers away. At such times Anthony knew they were going to try and make a break, and he blocked them by positioning himself just outside the fence in front of but beyond the reach of the lead elephant, a female. In each of these confrontations, he would gently talk to her. After 15 or 20 minutes the elephants would back away from the fence, and the whole episode would repeat the next morning. In between these times, Anthony would walk round the corral, constantly singing and talking to the animals about anything he could think of.
Anthony’s methods worked. One day, the elephants’ hostility turned off like someone had flicked a light switch, and the matriarch gently reached her trunk out to Anthony. Very wary at first, it took several attempts before Anthony let the trunk touch him—and when it did, it tenderly caressed his chest. From that point forward, the herd became his friends.
The Baghdad Rescue
Already quite accustomed to overcoming impossible odds, Anthony made a quick decision upon hearing of the invasion of Iraq: he was going in to rescue the animals from the Baghdad Zoo. He picked up the phone and dialed a military attaché, insisting that the attaché get him into Baghdad. The attaché was, of course, shocked that anyone wanted to get into a war-torn city from which everyone else was fleeing, but he nonetheless complied.
Nine days after the invasion, Anthony, alone and with no knowledge of the local language, landed in Baghdad. Upon visiting the zoo, he was horrified. Out of the zoo’s original 650 animals, only 35 were left alive. “On my first walk around the Baghdad Zoo at the beginning of the war, I was so dismayed by what I saw, I considered that getting a rifle and shooting each animal would be the only humane thing to do,” Anthony says. “I had never seen animals in such poor condition. Outside of a few individuals, no humans showed any interest whatsoever in the welfare of these magnificent creatures, or afforded them any common decency.”
Very fortunately, he decided to stay and attempt the rescue. But servicing the remaining animals was an impossible task, as looters had taken literally everything, including water pipes. Anthony and several others quickly recruited assistants, who had to hand-carry water from the nearby river in buckets in 120- to 130-degree heat.
In addition to water, of course, the animals had to eat. Finding food for animals in a city in which humans couldn’t even find enough to eat was, needless to say, a Herculean task. But Anthony accomplished it. In the early days a good amount of food came from Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, which at the beginning of the war weren’t guarded. In that he was obtaining food and supplies for the zoo and its former returned staff (who had originally been employed by the Iraqi government), he didn’t consider his activities “looting”—he jokes that it was simply an “intergovernmental transfer of supplies.”
Establishing relationships with the local populace and military, Anthony became affectionately known as “the crazy South African” and engendered more and more assistance in an area where “shoot to kill” was the order of the day. As his own personal funds were drained, he got on his satellite phone and managed to raise $650,000 in donations from around the world so that his efforts could continue.
The Baghdad project, which incorporated the rescue of animals from several private menageries around the city and a heroic rescue of Saddam’s personal prize stallions, resulted in a fully-functioning zoo being proudly handed back to the Iraqi government.
There are many more astounding details to this amazing story, which can be found in Anthony’s book Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo, available from all popular booksellers. The book is also being made into a major motion picture, Good Luck, Mr. Anthony, by Beacon pictures, slated to be directed by Taylor Hackford.
“This had a profound impact on me,” says Anthony, “and I decided that an example had to be set. Some of us humans had to get together, draw a line and say, this far and no further. A stand had to be made against mankind’s irreverence for other life forms. At the end of the day we only survive because of man’s deep roots into the environment and plant and animal kingdoms of which we are so much a part.”
Following the Baghdad rescue, Lawrence Anthony founded The Earth Organization, an international group with which he is carrying on his substantial conservation work and which will also be the subject of a future feature in Organic Connections.
For more information visit www.lawrenceanthony.co.za
