China, the United States, and parts of Africa, such as Kenya and Gabon, have all joined together in order to ensure both the protection of elephants and the destruction of confiscated ivory collected from illegal smuggling. This is their fight against poachers who kill 30,000 elephants and rhinos each year.
Recently, both China and the U.S. have crushed about 12 tons of ivory, intending to send a clear message to poachers that they will not tolerate ivory trafficking. Kenya on the other hand has taken a more offensive stance by picking up arms in order to protect elephant populations.
“Ivory poaching happens all the time even with the rangers patrolling. From 1973 to 1989 over 85 percent of Kenya’s elephant population went down and over time this accumulated ivory ended up in stockpiles across the world. Those with stockpiles must immediately destroy the ivory taken off markets and educate their children about it. Unfortunately, as long as there is a trade for ivory the killing will not stop,” said founder of the David Sheldrick Trust for Elephants, Daphne Sheldrick, in an interview with Time magazine.
Within Kenya and Gabon every day is a struggle against poachers, who slaughter the elephants only remove their ivory and then kill their young. Kenyan rangers have resorted to using weapons because they are the only thing between the poachers and the animals. Civilians enter national parks and run the risk of encountering poachers.
Once securing the ivory tusks and meat for the trip home, the poachers leave without a trace, making it hard for wildlife rangers to track the perpetrators. Then the poachers put the ivory up on the black market, selling to Chinese and the American citizens, who are big consumers of the precious commodity. These buyers pay high prices to use the ivory for medicines and make them into jewelry and other miscellaneous items.
The most difficult part for the poachers is the trip to these countries. Poachers now have to face airport security, and in African airports such as Kenya, they have put maximum effort into tracking down the poachers trying to smuggle ivory through. However, poachers conceal the ivory by either wrapping it tightly or disguising it so that dogs, specially trained to sniff out the valuable export, are fooled.
The tusks eventually make their way to China and the US, countries which have accumulated over 6 tons each of the ivory. China and the US have formally decided to crush the ivory in order to prove to poachers that they will not tolerate illegal trade.
Crushing the ivory appears to be the only option. It demonstrates initiative in arresting and prosecuting poachers as well as indirectly discouraging because of the known risks; however, this does not weaken the supply of ivory. Poachers will continue to hunt down the animals. They still are able to smuggle in the ivory into other countries and 20 years from now the U.S. and China will have another 6 tons of it lying in the confiscated pile.
There is a frenzy happening within Africa over the price of ivory. It is comparable to the price of diamonds, ranging from $500 to even $5,000 dollars per kilogram, depending on the weight.
“It is clear that the killing of elephants for illegal trade in ivory has become much worse in recent years. The demand is especially large in China and other Southeast Asian countries. This is in part because of the rising economies of China and other countries where there is a greater demand for ivory. One concern is that in China, ivory is now viewed simply as a commodity to invest in. The idea is that it will become rarer and hence go up in value. This is a difficult challenge to face,” said Dr. George Amato, Director for the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics American Museum of Natural History in New York.
It’s hard to tell whether the crushing of ivory will lead to the weakening of its illegal trade in the future. One thing is certain: if it isn’t diminished soon, African elephants may also one day be added to the list of extinct species.
