Elephant Aggression on Humans and Rhinos

Animal Planet recently ran a segment on Elephants killing Rhinos in African reserves. This is an unusual manifestation of inter-species killing, and it prompted me to further research the subject.
I will summarize my findings, listing sources at the end of this essay.

The first thing I realized was that this phenomenon has been carrying on for a few years.

From BBC News, February 2000:

'Aggressive young orphaned elephants are reported to have killed 36 rhinos, including rare black ones, in a game park in eastern South Africa'.

CBS 60 minutes:

'But as Bob Simon first reported in 1999, there's a problem lurking in the South African bush. Game rangers discovered that a new group of juvenile delinquents has been attacking and killing the white rhinoceros, the rhino they've spent years protecting'.

An October 2006 NYT report leads us to , where elephants have killed hundreds of people since the 1990's, and back to South Africa and the rape and killing of Rhinos.
Three elephants in Pilanesberg National Park alone were responsible for the death of 63 rhinos. It seems like the efforts to save white rhinos from extinction have been almost in vain, at least until the aggression problem is solved.

In the June 14 issue of Seed Magazine, G.A. Bradshaw tentatively suggest that elephants, like humans, might also suffer from psychological trauma. Some factors: change of habitat with relocation by humans, separation from parents by accidental or deliberate death, starvation, social breakdown owed to poaching, and more.

I find it odd that animal experts are puzzled by the aggression phenomenon. After all, dogs are not the only creatures to manifest near-human feelings and retain memories.

The Science Buzz website expounds on the social breakdown, in simple language:

'In normal elephant societies, young elephants are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years.
When an elephant dies, its family members engage in intense mourning and burial rituals, conducting weeklong vigils over the body, carefully covering it with earth and brush, revisiting the bones for years afterward, caressing the bones with their trunks, often taking turns rubbing their trunks along the teeth of a skull's lower jaw, the way living elephants do in greeting'.

Thus it is no surprise that young Elephants relocated to 'societies' without parental figures would be traumatized and grow to be aggressive creatures.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune delves into some traumatic events that may affect the Elephants:

'In one state in northeast India, elephants have killed more than 600 people in a dozen years.
But these attacks are no match for the wholesale slaughter and suffering visited on elephants by humans, beginning with relentless displacement from their home territories. In Uganda, ivory-seeking poachers are known to prefer grenades over guns; park managers "cull" oversize herds by shooting animals en masse, then tethering survivors to corpses until relocation trucks arrive.
Such sickening practices belong to the dark days of earlier centuries. It is shameful that our species retains the dual capacity for visiting such cruelty on another, and for looking the other way'.

It may be too late for the grown elephants and the rhinos will probably have to be lead to a secure spot, but it's time to optimize the treatment of the young bulls.

Sources:
BBC
CBS
NYT
Seed Mag
Buzz
Star Tribune