Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives - By Thomas French Page 0,2

grab small trees and shake them, as if trying to swat the helicopters from the sky.

Here in Mkhaya, encounters between elephants and humans tend to be more relaxed. Every day, the herd indulges the curiosity of the tourists who approach in Land Rovers with their camcorders. Usually the elephants seem curious as well, walking within a few feet of the humans, calmly reaching forward with their trunks. Still, whenever the two species meet, anything can happen. Once, a park employee was bicycling to work when he accidentally pedaled into the middle of a herd. The rattling of his bike spooked a mother with her calf, and the cow attacked, chasing down the man and then picking him up and throwing him several times. He survived—barely.

In Swaziland, as in other parts of Africa, elephants have struggled to hold their own against humans. Americans tend to think of Africa as a continent of vast, unclaimed spaces, where species can roam to the horizon and beyond. In reality, humans have occupied so much of the continent that many animals are confined inside game parks. Although these parks are often huge—sometimes stretching across hundreds of miles—the animals increasingly find their movement restricted by human boundaries, human considerations, human priorities.

As our species paves over the planet, squeezing other species out of existence, we seek solace in the myth of unlimited freedom. Inside our subdivisions, we sit with our kids and watch The Lion King, singing along as Simba and Pumbaa and Timon parade across the endless veldt and majestically celebrate the circle of life. But the truth is, the circle of life is constantly shrinking. If you’re going to see a lion, even in Africa, it will almost certainly be on a tour inside a fenced park.

The conflict unfolds in miniature inside Swaziland, a country smaller than New Jersey. Although elephants once thrived here, the only two places where they can be found today are inside Mkhaya and at another fenced reserve, Hlane Royal National Park. Compared with the mammoth game parks in South Africa and other neighboring countries, Mkhaya and Hlane are tiny. Only a few dozen elephants live inside the two parks.

Fifty years ago, not a single member of their species could be found in Swaziland. They had all long since died off or been killed by hunters. Then Ted Reilly, Mick’s father, stepped in. Ted was born and raised in Swaziland and spent his childhood in the bush, watching antelope graze in the distance, studying how kingfishers bore holes into the dirt to make their nests. As a young man he left home to study conservation, working as a ranger in game reserves in nearby South Africa and Zimbabwe. When he returned to Swaziland in 1960 to help run his family’s farm, he discovered that during his years away almost all of the country’s wildlife had been wiped out. Traveling through regions that had once teemed with dozens of species, he found them all gone.

Reilly decided to bring the animals back. First he turned the family farm in Mlilwane into a wildlife sanctuary. He planted trees and savanna grasses, built dams to create wetlands, then stocked the new habitat with species he had imported from other countries or had captured himself. His adventures bestowed him with a larger-than-life reputation. He tore through the bush in an old jeep named Jezebel, pursuing impala and warthogs and any poachers foolish enough to venture inside the sanctuary. He scoured the Swazi countryside, gathering scorpions and frogs and lizards. He had a female hippo from a London zoo flown in, then ferried a male from the same zoo across the English Channel and had it flown in from Paris. His rangers captured a nine-foot crocodile on the banks of the Nkomati River, then drove the thrashing reptile to Mlilwane in a pickup truck.

One harrowing day, Reilly and a crew of thirty were transporting a white rhino that they’d tranquilized and then hoisted onto a flatbed truck. The men, seated around the sleeping prize, were startled when the rhino awoke enough to snap through his ropes and stand up beside them on the back of the moving vehicle. Their armored captive was groggy, but no less fearsome. Some of the men jumped off. Others yelled until the driver stopped and the rhino could be restrained again.

The campaign to restore the country’s wildlife inevitably drew the attention of King Sobhuza II. The Swazi monarch, one of the last kings to reign over an African country, was famous for