BOOK REVIEW / A jumbo-sized problem: 'The Fate of the Elephant' - Douglas Chadwick: Viking, 17.50 pounds

NOW THERE's a name for a book - The Fate of the Elephant. A big subject, one would say. Not as big as The Fate of the Planet, but bigger than The Fate of the Aardvark. It has gravitas, undoubtedly, but does it have uncertainty? Here is Douglas Chadwick, biologist and journalist, sitting at home in Whitefish, Montana, when he gets a call from National Geographic magazine, which wants him to investigate elephants. Intrepidly, he launches himself at three of the world's seven continents. Sometimes life is hell, for a day or two at least, sometimes it's wild, weird and wacky (well, this is the National Geographic), sometimes he gets depressed, sometimes he can't believe his luck in getting paid to have such fun.

The years roll by. So do the miles, thousands of them. So, presumably, do the expenses and salary cheques. And so, for global warming enthusiasts, do his travel-based emissions of carbon dioxide and other planetary infections. Finally, back in Whitefish, Montana, 476 pages later, he arrives at his conclusion. What's the fate of the elephant, Doug? Well, it's - pretty bad. Thanks, Doug.

I came to this book prepared to dislike it. On the basis that the fate of any life-form sharing the planet with around 10 billion human beings is going to be bleak, I reasoned that Doug might have remained in Whitefish, Montana, until National Geographic offered him an assignment that enabled him to tell us something new. Thanks to the work of bodies such as the Environmental Investigation Agency, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Elefriends, of people such as Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, doesn't everyone know that the elephant is in trouble? And if they didn't know it, couldn't they guess it? At what point do wildlife films and writing turn into voyeurism? How many television viewers who drool over life with the lions in the Serengeti put their hands in their pockets for conservation, write to the World Bank to complain or buy their Christmas presents from Oxfam?

With such questions ringing in my ears, I sat down to read. And I have to confess, I was almost converted. I acclimatised myself to the National Geographic style - the discursiveness, the generous dollops of 'colour', the extensive dramatis personae. The research is impressive in its scope, from the jungles of Africa and the ivory warehouses of Hong Kong to the bureaucratic heights of Cites, the convention on endangered species, in Switzerland. Chadwick goes to great lengths to present all sides of the argument, his journeys are well-observed and his writing is generally free of the corn pone idiomatics and Hemingwayishness that often beset the National Geographic.

Some details linger in the mind - the extraordinary pygmy who is his guide in Central Africa, the bizarre and horrific treatment meted out to animals in the Buddhist society of Thailand, the 'pleasant and mannerly' American folks - from the Texan oil business - who spend small fortunes to shoot big game and over their evening cocktails talk of the 'timeless savage union between hunter and prey'. In Malaysia, where rainforest logging continues merrily, the Government wants to quadruple the population (to create more consumers) and the few remaining elephants are shipped insanely from bits of logged forest to bits of soon-to-be-logged forest - Chadwick confesses to becoming 'paralysed with despair', not merely about the fate of the elephant, but the fate of the planet in general.

Frankly, I am not surprised. The theme of this book is that the wild places of the world are going and the elephant is probably going with them. No matter which side of the conservation debate you take - whether you think wildlife should be culled and 'harvested' or left alone - this is the inescapable dilemma. Chadwick offers much interesting analysis and observation, but no solutions. He can't because, as yet, there aren't any. If this comes as

news to you, read this book to inform yourself, but don't expect to be cheered up.

Redstone's Indian Diary for 1994 ( pounds 9.95) displays a quirky collection of consumer ephemera from India: advertisements, tobacco packets, posters of stern local deities, discarded junk transformed into children's toys. Elephants usually appear as emblems of strength and safety, but this matchbox label shows one in danger - if not, this time, from human population, hunters or rain-forest logging.

(Photograph omitted)