WALKING THUNDER: In the Footsteps of the African Elephant by Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson will soon be released by Merrell Publishers, London. It is not just a book of photography but also a manifesto for the salvation of the African elephant and the biosphere as a whole. It continues from where their first book, LOST AFRICA: The Eyes of Origin (2004), a tribute to place-based people, left off. Tribal peoples everywhere from the Mursi in Ethiopia to the Himba of Namibia told us how globalization and climate change were impacting their lives. Rain patterns had changed especially over the last twenty years. The rains were more infrequent and with changing customs, peoples no longer prayed. Some say that is why God was angry and were punishing them. In the midst of this “noisy time” , this ” time of confusion” a human language is being lost every two weeks, we are told, and with each language are lost ways of apprehending the world, ways of perceiving that could salvage our very future. But while many indigenous peoples will be lost , the “other”, thousands of other species are being impacted. On earth, foremost among these are the elephants of Africa who evolved alongside humanity for several hundred thousand years. Did we follow elephant “songlines” out of Africa? Today the drought in Kenya is reeking havoc among its wildlife and its peoples. Poachers from Somalia and all over Africa are killing again.In 2006, over 30,000 elephants were destroyed. The Asian market is fueling a bloodlust for ivory as an investment since the market price has risen. The recession is not only hurting everyone, it is decimating the great herds. The genocide of elephants for ivory money in Tchad and Sudan by Janjaweed militia are killing native African tribes, tribes who once honored the elephant. The elephant that once numbered over a million in the early 1980’s now number about 400,000. Their carcasses stain the unborn, both human and elephant alike. The elephant helped us survive for countless millennia. Their bodies, their migration paths, their mythic presence in our imagination helped us become who we are. We cannot fail them. As recently reported in the June Scientific American 2009, the poaching needs to be stopped. Globalization in the form of the new colonialism in Africa threatens its people and its wildlife. The children of the future elephants and humans are watching. Surely their destiny and ours are inextricably linked.