Value Animals' Lives as We Would Our Own

The move to drop the U.S. ban on big-game trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia is one ill-conceived. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does a disservice to the most massive mammals on earth — pachyderms. Their pregnancy cycle may run longer than 18 months. Humankind's increasing need for space equally increasingly sees their extermination. Elephants' numbers have deecreased by 30 percent, between the years 2007-2014.

As game mammals and other undomesticated animals find their spaces to roam threatened by civilizations' intrusion on animal habitats, as is the case for bison and deer, hunting and poaching concurrently thrive underground.

Elephants have long been used as beasts of burden in, for example,  the clearing the paths for the very civilizations now threatening to consume them to the death. At the same time, both profanely and vainly, humankind adorns its bodies with ivory. The elephants population globally now totals less than 300,000.

How ironic it is that elephant protections are now being considered for loosening by the very political party — the Republicans, who adopted then animal as their "mascot."

Hopefully, this doesn’t foreshadow things to come for Republicans themselves as human citizen safety nets are under consideration for elimination.

Pro-environment and conservation-advocate President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a Republican, in 1906 established the U.S. Forest Service. Roosevelt's actions ushered the creation of five U.S. national parks. Additionally, with the Antiquities Act led to18 National Monuments including 230 million of protected land, 51 bird reserves, four game reserves and 150 National Forests.

Appreciating the threat to elephants:

• Quitman, Arkansas has Riddle’s Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary

• In California we find, California Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)

• Fellsmere, Florida is where The National Elephant Center is located

• Polk City, Florida has the Ringling Brothers Center for Conservation

• And in Hochenwald, Tennessee, we find the Elephant Sanctuary 

Elephants compete for land in Africa and other locales, concurrently living with human growth and greed. Their long reproductive cycle impedes their repopulation in a timely manner. Thus, if they are to survive mankind must create a space for them. So too is it with lions, giraffes, and other wild animals. Creatures who have been felled by those with an arsenal of guns to wipe them out. Instead of adopting seemingly absurd things like highways, let's go and adopt an elephant or a child to enhance our own beings.

It is time exert our individual responsibility, to care and nurture those within our circle of life.

Dr. Ada M. Fisher was the first black woman to serve as the Republican National Committeewoman. She was a candidate for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina, a candidate for U.S. Congress, and a candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives. She is the author of "Common Sense Conservative Prescriptions Solutions for What Ails Us, Book I." For more of her reports, Go Here Now.