Yes, please: ‘Save the Elephants’!

Let’s ignore the troubling times in the US for now and think instead about African elephants – and something encouraging that may be happening for those iconic but desperately endangered animals.

  

After years of predictions about African elephants nearing extinction, as thousands upon thousands of them have been savagely slaughtered for their ivory, a tiny ray of hope recently became visible.

But first, a little background. From an estimated 1.3 million African elephants in 1979, that number dropped to fewer than half 10 years later. Why? Because around 70,000 elephant tusks were leaving Africa each year, most of them destined for China. Once Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) banned the ivory trade in 1989, elephants were relatively safe, and their numbers began picking up.  

Countless babies have become orphans

Then about a decade ago, China’s booming economy fostered a demand for ivory that sparked a  renewal of the killing, or genocide, as it has also been called. Soon, China was reported to be the end destination for 70% of illegal ivory, while its price kept climbing as more people wanted it and more people got involved in obtaining it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/science/africa-elephants-poaching-recovery.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160902&nlid=20760274&tntemail0=y

The last decade has been a horrific time for African elephants, as their protections ran out and ivory-lust and greed continued unchecked. Elephant families have been decimated; babies have seen their parents butchered before them; family structure, leadership roles and basic behaviors have been altered.  One extraordinary example of fear-based adaptation: an elephant (wearing a tracking collar) who moved from Kenya to Somalia, usually traveling by night and resting in thick bush during the day, and who lived.   

That “is extreme behavior adapted to survive the worst-known predator on Earth: man,” says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, elephant expert and advocate.

Douglas-Hamilton @ NYC march

Ivory trafficking involves poachers who brutally murder elephants and sell their tusks; smugglers seeking their cut; entrepreneurs running ivory-carving factories, merchants who sell the trinkets made from elephant tusks; and consumers, who place more value on an ivory bracelet or statuette than on the life of a sentient being – all with an overlay of organized crime.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/world/africa/african-elephant-population-dropped-30-percent-in-7-years.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160901&nlid=20760274&tntemail0=y

The largest land mammals on earth, elephants are majestic, intelligent and social. They live in matriarchal family groups, protect their young and mourn their dead.  Herbivores with 70-year life spans, they’re crucial to their ecosystem; they travel huge distances in the wild, remembering both their routes and safe places. And yet, they have been hunted and killed in a variety of creatively cruel ways.  For ivory trinkets.

However -- and here is where possible good news comes in -- elephants may have been granted a stay of execution, or better, by China, the very country whose demand for elephant ivory has caused cataclysmic drops in elephant population numbers. With its decision to end its domestic ivory trade this year, China may make the crucial difference. That decision, plus a drop in ivory prices and a sustained global advocacy campaign, may mean life instead of death for irreplaceable African elephants. 

Both male and female African elephants have tusks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/world/africa/ivory-elephants-china.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170329&nlid=20760274&tntemail0=y

My sources for information, and now for guarded optimism too, have been the NYTimes, which for years has covered the plight of African elephants, and various organizations that have worked against unbelievable odds to protect them – the chief one for me being “Save the Elephants.” It was founded by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who has dedicated his life to elephants and founded STE in 1993 after documenting the scale of poaching.

  

"I don’t think anybody in any civilized country would want to cause the extermination of a species of animal," he says.

We shall see.