Former Homecoming King Returns from Zambia with a Message

Around this time 20 years ago, Sport Beattie was being crowned the senior homecoming king of .

Now he is rescuing orphaned elephants in Kafue National Park in Zambia with the non-governmental organization he founded in 2008, Game Rangers International.

A Zimbabwe native, Beattie returned to Port Washington for the second time this weekend since he studied at the high school in the 1990-1991 school-year as a Rotary exchange student.

Beattie came for his class reunion and for an old friend’s wedding. But he also took the opportunity to promote Game Rangers International, giving presentations to the Port Washington-Saukville Rotary Club and a class of fourth-graders at .

The organization aims to protect elephants from poaching by stopping poachers, rescuing orphaned elephants, and raising awareness. It operates with support from the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and in cooperation with the Zambian Wildlife Authority and local communities.

The flagship program of the organization is the Elephant Orphanage Project. Beattie and his colleagues have a solar-powered camp of tents in the depths of the Kafue National Park — the second-largest park in Africa — from which they find and care for orphaned elephants.

“It’s as wild as it gets,” Beattie said. "At night you don’t just stumble to the bathroom because you might stumble into a lion."

His own tent is perched atop an ant hill for the safety of the added height.

Poaching is a chronic program

Every once in a while the group see birds flocking to carcass; other times they get a call from a safari. And sometimes it’s their own scouts who find elephants who have been poached — killed and stripped of their ivory tusks.

“The poachers come quickly, chop the ivory, and are gone within a few hours,” Beattie said.

When an elephant cub’s mother is poached, the cub tends to stay by the mother, trying to nurse. The rest of the herd must eventually move on, leaving the cub alone and hungry. Beattie said the cubs normally drink two liters of milk every three hours.

Beattie’s team has rescued seven orphaned elephants, whom they look after at the camp.

“They have formed into their own little herd,” Beattie said. “We have local keepers who care for them every time of the day. They act as the mother figure.”

Eventually, the hope is that each elephant will be able to reintegrate with a wild herd.

Another wing of Game Rangers International is the team of anti-poachers. Recruited from surrounding villages, the scouts try to get to the poachers before the poachers get to the elephants. It can be a dangerous job.

“If we catch someone with ivory, it’s a 15-years sentence,” Beattie said. “Scouts are armed. It’s not shoot to kill, but it’s shoot if shot upon.”

Of the 21 scouts, nine are former poachers, who decided the anti-poaching gig was a better idea upon learning about the organization.

“When poachers are clearly just trying to feed their families, we try to work with them,” Beattie said. “We want to help them find alternative means of income. We want people to see that through conservation their community is better.”

Youngsters learn valuable lesson

The fourth-graders at Port Catholic participated in one of the regular lessons when Beattie asked them all to stand.

During the exercise, he asks students to look around, and says the number of students in the room is equal to the number of elephants that existed when their parents were young.

“Then we play a little game,” Beattie said, “and if there’s 20 of them I shoot 18 and leave two standing. That’s how many elephants have been lost. It’s a good way of getting the point across.”

It can be a harsh lesson, but for Beattie it’s an important one.

“People have to adopt the mindset that what happens on the other side of the world is just as important as what happens on this side because everything’s linked," Beattie said. "We’re in a lucky situation where we can get involved.

"If we can’t look after elephants, what are we dong? If we can’t look after elephants, I don’t think we can look over ourselves, in the end.”

Beattie welcomed anyone interested in the organization to fly to Zambia and volunteer. Or you can donate here. For more information, contact Beattie at sport@gamerangersinternational.org.