Legalized Barbarism on America’s Doorstep

Do you like that little ivory trinket you adorn yourself with? I’ll bet the elephant that gave up his life for it was pretty fond of it too. Do you care that you are supporting organized crime by purchasing that cute little black market item? How about the possible extinction of elephants just so you can show off your trophy?

Sure, look the other way and contemplate your rationale for why an elephant had to die for your selfish pleasure.

Up to 5 percent of Africa's population of elephants was killed by poachers for the year ending in August 2006, said University of Washington biologist Samuel Wasser. That amounted to more than 23,000 elephants, which yielded an estimated 240 tons of ivory. Photo credit: Benezeth Mutayoba

A kilogram of high-quality ivory sold for $200 on the black market in 2004, but the price tag for that quantity ballooned to $750 last year, Wasser said.

The tusks are sought after in some Asian countries, sometimes in the form of hankos, round cylinders of ivory on which some communities in China and Japan carve their personal seal for use as a prestigious signature stamp. The creamy tusks also are used to carve cane and knife handles and other small objects. The price of high-quality ivory has created a black market, with commodity speculators driving poaching to never-before-seen levels, Wasser said.

"This is serious business, and if we don't open our eyes to the problem, we can kiss our elephants goodbye," he said.

In fact, elephants have been poached to extinction already in Senegal and to near extinction in Guinea-Bissau, said Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, a biologist at Columbia University.

The key to poaching prevention for African elephants lies in enforcement of a 1989 international trade ban which was highly effective immediately after it was enacted, but is no longer because governments withdrew funding for its enforcement, Wasser said.

So, that tells the rest of the world that governments don’t care if the elephants do become extinct. There must be more pressing problems than to worry about taking a valuable piece of the animal kingdom off of the charts. Sure, that’s it, there are more important matters to be concerned with, like making money from the slaughter of this doomed species.

China and the U.S. are the top two importers of ivory that fuels a black market that is growing at an alarming rate due to organized crime. And guess what? The law says it’s okay to do it. Sure, you can bring in ivory tusks from Africa, but only as long as they are trophies. Wow, how trusting of the Customs Service to believe that all of those ivory tusks are for trophies only. It sure was thoughtful of our lawmakers to show the world we are tough on poachers and then give trophy hunters the okay to contribute to the elephants extinction.