Ivory Trade Steadily on the Rise, Despite Poaching Ban
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Although the ivory trade was made illegal, poaching incidents have increased over the years, pushing African Elephants ever closer to the brink of extinction.
Recently, more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of bloodstained ivory were seized from 100 illegally killed elephants at airports. Kenya and Ethiopian authorities used specially trained dogs to sniff out the shipments of ivory; both of which were to be sent as “unaccompanied luggage” to Bangkok. Even though the ivory trade was banned internationally in 1989, it has been steadily on the increase in recent years; going from 47 elephants killed in 2007 to 98 deaths in 2008, and 125 killed this year.
Iain Douglas-Hamilton—head of the Save the Elephants organization—said the airport seizures were a “tremendous coup” for the Kenya Wildlife Service. He also added, “if this proves to be native Kenyan ivory rather than ivory in transit, it’s a serious confirmation of poaching on the rise in Kenya”.
Elephants have many human-like characteristics; for one, their life-spans are about as long as ours, ranging from 50 to 70 years. And their tusks are actually the equivalent of a person being right or left-handed, but instead an elephant is right or left-tusked. Their tusks have a range of uses, from digging, to moving trees, and occasionally as weapons; and their dominant, or master tusk is usually shorter, due to all the use and wearing down over the years. Both male and female African Elephants come with tusks, which can reach over 10 ft (3 m) in length, and weigh over 200 lbs (90 kg)!
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Unfortunately, the Elephant population has been rapidly on the decline, due to excessive hunting and habitat destruction. At the beginning of the 20th century, the elephant population was estimated to be somewhere between 5 and 10 million. But now…In some areas, it is less than 10,000. Which brings us to another human-like characteristic: elephants develop extremely strong social bonds with their family and herd. This bond can be so strong, that the elephants are even able to identify their family members by their bones. Sometimes, individual elephants will even return to mourn their family’s remains over the years, as well, while make a rather distinctive sound.
Julius Kipng’etich, head of Kenya’s Wildlife Service says, “It is as if they are crying: Please don’t wear ivory. Please leave it to the elephants, for heaven’s sake”.
I certainly would not be surprised if that were true. Elephants and other mammals (including hippopotamuses and narwhals) have been hunted and poached so extensively over the years that their numbers are dwindling fast. When will people start to realize that saving a life is more important than turning a profit?
By Heidi Marshall
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Tags: elephants, ivory, trade, Wildlife & Flora
That is true, fishsnorkel, but we are talking mainly about value as humanity has defined it, not some absolute truth (life is life, death is death) that humans have also conceived of. We consider things like intelligence, how close to extinction the animal is, how nice it looks, etc., but of course there are other more practical values, like their role in an ecosystem.
I happen to think it is worse to kill an elephant than a rat or mosquito, but I also realize extinction is the way of the world: it will happen eventually to everything. On the other hand, elephants never caused the extinction of anything as far as I know and would just like to be left alone. Animals always seem to be the victims of humanity, never other way around, and it’s nice to see humans trying to protect them sometimes.
Is there really an intrinsic difference between the death of the last individual (extinction) and the death of any other indivdual (death)? Or, given that death is totally inevitable, and that life is life regardless of how it looks, is this a distinction that only means something to people who really like certain morphological forms (elephants)? Especially when you consider the complicit involvement of the same people in the death/extinction of other individuals with different morphological forms(invasive species). The truth is that death and extinction are only different because conservationist have somehow managed to forget that species are defined by individuals, not the other way round. Death is death, regardless of how many remain.