The African Elephant, the Ivory Trade and Extinction
One of the most at risk animals on the planet is the African Elephant. In fact, some studies indicate that by the year 2020, large roaming groups of wild African Elephants will no longer exist! The problem, unfortunately, is due to elephant hunting and poaching in pursuit of economically valuable African Elephant ivory tusk.
Here’s what every concerned world citizen needs to know about the problem…and its possible solution:
What’s Happening to The African Elephant?
Hunters, or poachers, prize African Elephants for their ivory tusks, which fetch a large premium in the underground ivory trade. This has led to a dramatic decrease in elephant population. In the 1980s, for example, there were about 1,000,000 wild African Elephants. Yet with a poaching death rate of approximately 7%, or about 70,000 deaths each year, the existing population now numbers less than 600,000. “If the trend continues,” according to U. Washington’s Samuel Wasser, “there won’t be any elephants except in fenced areas with a lot of enforcement to protect them.”
The dire statistics are unavoidable. In Zakouma National Park (located in Africa’s Chad), for example, there were almost four thousand elephants in 2005. In 2009…six hundred and seventeen! That’s about an 85% decrease. Stats like these aren’t surprising when you learn that over 11 metric tons of poached ivory were recently taken from ships on their way to Taiwan and Japan.
What Can be Done?
Much of the problem is due to the ivory trade. Inhibit the ivory trade, and you give the African Elephant a fighting chance to repopulate. This isn’t a new idea, of course. In 1989, for example, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) put much tighter restrictions on the poaching of elephants for ivory. Unfortunately, a limited amount of success has led to a decreased enforcement on elephant ivory cultivation.
So, in order to save the African Elephant, governments – those of the West and Africa – as well as environmental organizations have to push for strict sanctions on the sale of African Elephant ivory. Take away the financial incentive to hunt and kill elephants, and elephants are given a chance to grow their numbers.
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