English: The eye of an asian elephant at Elephant Nature Park, Thailand Deutsch: Das Auge eines indischen Elefanten im Elephant Nature Park, Thailand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Can the slaughter be stopped? Cover story of National Geographic magazine – and an issue I am passionate about!
Men with ivory tusks, Dar Es Salaam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
IN JANUARY 2012 A HUNDRED RAIDERS ON HORSEBACK CHARGED OUT OF CHAD INTO CAMEROON’S BOUBA NDJIDAH NATIONAL PARK, SLAUGHTERING HUNDREDS OF ELEPHANTS—entire families—in one of the worst concentrated killings since a global ivory trade ban was adopted in 1989. Carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, they dispatched the elephants with a military precision reminiscent of a 2006 butchering outside Chad’s Zakouma National Park. And then some stopped to pray to Allah. Seen from the ground, each of the bloated elephant carcasses is a monument to human greed. Elephant poaching levels are currently at their worst in a decade, and seizures of illegal ivory are at their highest level in years. From the air too the scattered bodies present a senseless crime scene—you can see which animals fled, which mothers tried to protect their young, how one terrified herd of 50 went down together, the latest of the tens of thousands of elephants killed across Africa each year. Seen from higher still, from the vantage of history, this killing field is not new at all. It is timeless, and it is now.
Related articles
- Blood Ivory: Why Elephants Are Being Killed to Make Religious (patheos.com)
- Religious fervor drives elephant slaughter (manfly.wordpress.com)
- AVA should vote against ivory trade (todayonline.com)
- Urge the Catholic Church to Support a Ban on the International Ivory Trade (forcechange.com)
- How N.Y. can stop elephant slaughter (preciousjules1985.wordpress.com)
- Elephant (patcegan.wordpress.com)
- Elephants slaughtered, orphan found in latest Africa poaching (worldnews.nbcnews.com)
- Religious market a driving force for ivory, killing elephants (greenerideal.com)
- Elephants slaughtered, orphan found in Chad (worldnews.nbcnews.com)
- Interview: Shining a Light on Africa’s Elephant Slaughter (e360.yale.edu)
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