Sri Lanka, Oct. 26 -- On 10th August 1950, a young wild bull at Panamure broke through one-inch wire ropes, and when the gate of the kraal was finally opened for him, he ran out towards the forest, stopped, and turned back to rejoin his herd. He could have escaped alone. He chose not to. Within hours he was dead, shot in front of several hundred people.

Few Sri Lankans today know his story. Yet in his time that single rifle shot echoed around the world. Seventy-five years later, the shooting of Tusker Kawantissa asks the same question the bull's death once asked: what value do we place on the life of a wild elephant, and who answers when that life is taken?

A town Built for a Spectacle

Kawantissa under treatment

The Panamure kraal w...