First the good news: a year ago 46 countries signed the London declaration on illegal wildlife trade. Second, the bad news: more elephants than ever before are being killed. The figures astound me. I had, foolishly, naively, believed on the basis of no evidence that whilst it was a problem, it was not a massive problem. Confronted with the figures, I am horrified.
Some 50,000 elephants a year, an average of 93 a day, are being killed across Africa. It’s all illegal and most of it is going on in Tanzania and Mozambique. And why is there such a trade in dead elephants? It’s all to do with ivory.
We know that ivory is used in traditional medicines. These are medicines that don’t work. In China, ivory is used to treat everything from nightmares to dysentery, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that it helps. It’s tradition, handed down over generations by people with not the first idea about medicine from people who knew even less. One would imagine that the people using ivory to treat ailments that it cannot treat are either stupid or indoctrinated by their mothers and fathers, or even both. But the other things elephants are killed for are even worse.
How about killing a beautiful animal like an elephant in order to obtain some souvenir ivory? I am not sure quite who would be impressed by the destruction of one of the wonders of nature in order to display an elephant tusk above the mantelpiece, but I assume someone must be, or perhaps displaying it as part of a trinket, a necklace perhaps. “Look at me: I’ve got a lovely necklace which was made from an elephant’s tusk. It was killed so I could have a nice necklace. Impressed, are we?”
I suspect I am not the only one to be appalled by the site of hunters displaying their kills. Smiling assassins, lying next to a needlessly slaughtered wild animal in the name of sport. Ugh. In fact, I find their murderous tendencies sickening in the extreme.
It is thought that there are fewer than half a million elephants left in the whole of Africa and at the current rate of killing, they will be extinct in ten years, probably less. And all for what? Quackery, adornment and jewellery accessories.
It is not just elephants who are being slaughtered needlessly for medicines that don’t work. The rhino is in the same situation. Who would have thought that we still live in a world that has so many citizens who believe in quack medicines that have no basis in science and why do we tolerate the needless and pointless killing of so many beautiful animals?
Many people would like to make politicians extinct, but they are the only people who can save the world from destroying itself and I’d like to think they might soon make a start by saving the elephant.
