Elephant Conservation by Ron Thomson should be required reading for anyone, pro-hunting or anti-hunting, that wants to truly understand the elephant conservation challenge. Sadly the book shows what little role science and sound game management plays in elephant conservation today. Thomson lays out that our first management priority is the soil, our second management priority is the plants and our last management priority is the animals . . . because the latter are completely dependent on the former. Of course, we approach elephant conservation in exactly the opposite manner. He talks about how game management strategies need to be tailored to the game management needs of specific populations, i.e., the elephants in Botswana versus the elephants in Tanzania. The impact that efforts to protect one species can have on other species in the same population, e.g., while elephant numbers in Botswana increased four fold from 1990 to 2013, other game populations have declined by 60% to in some cases 90%. If you ever intend to have a fact-based and science-rooted discussion with someone that is opposed to or agnostic toward elephant hunting as a conservation tool, you need to read this book.

Ron is, without doubt, the most experienced Elephant man alive today. In his classic work MAHOHBOH he has pictures of a riverine ecology taken before, during and after an explosion in the Elephant population that describe perfectly the problem associated with the overpopulation of Elephants - soil, flora and fauna of other species.

Every African hunter, whether of dangerous game or not, should have MAHOHBOH in their library and should read it annually.

I will be getting a copy of ELEPHANT CONSERVATION soonest. Thanks for the tip Mike.

All of the books in Ron's series documenting his career in Zim Parks are outstanding. He is a very good writer and has some incredible material to work with, his book on darting and capturing black rhinos is one of the best. Sadly, I just received and finished the last in his series, Game Rangers at War. Hopefully he will find an excuse to write something else.

I'm in Zim now on a tobacco farm an hour's drive from Harare and looking through his book. Ron gave it to a mate, Pieter, a couple of weeks ago in a hunting camp on the Zambezi. Great stuff but he's preaching to the choir as is his paper on his TGA. There are more of them than us and that's why we are fighting an uphill battle and are destined to lose. I wish it were not so and Mike is correct, it should be read by everyone. Ron is also 100% but it seems in today's world that 0% correct in numbers seems to win. Look at Hillary and our current president…
Cal

Cal's hit the nail on the head because the antis don't want to learn anything because they already know it all. But...

Ron is certainly the man when it comes to knowledge and common sense, and more importantly with his True Green Alliance, win or lose, he's the one who's gotten off his backside and actually done something.

I hope he gets the support he deserves.