Booming illegal ivory trade taking severe toll on Africa's elephants (will be gone in 1 decade)

[flamingdem]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/world/africa/africa-ivory-elephant-slaughter/index.html

Elephants are being killed in Africa at an alarming rate by increasingly efficient and well-armed poachers as international demand soars for the ivory from their tusks, wildlife conservation groups say.

The slaughter, described by some activists as unprecedented, is enabled by ineffective law enforcement, official corruption, porous borders and a rapidly expanding population seeking sustenance, the groups say. And it is being driven by a growing appetite for ivory products in increasingly affluent Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand.

"China has taken over Japan as the world's largest ivory consumer. And from 2006 to last year, the ivory price in China has tripled. So that's why some Chinese buy ivory products in Africa with dollars and smuggle them back to China to sell for a better price," said Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said his government has taken a firm stance on ivory trafficking. MORE AT LINK

[Coexist]

1. grrrrrrrrrrrr

[stuntcat]

2. this

This is the kind of story that wipes out my hope for people. Look what sick cruelty we'll do. All day every day there are stories this bad happening.
THIS is what humanity will do, no matter what a few of us want or keep hoping for.

[flamingdem]

3. Well your upset made me look for answers

John Kerry and others have brought up this issue. I'll keep looking to see what else
is going on but I recommend reading the entire article at the link for an idea of who
is who and what's happening (or not happening).

So maybe it's time to put some pressure and find out where and how to donate or help:


http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/15/world/africa/elephants-extinction-africa/index.html

(CNN) -- At the start of the 1980s there were more than a million elephants in Africa. During that decade, 600,000 were destroyed for ivory products. Today perhaps no more than 400,000 remain across the continent, according to Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington, who is widely recognized as an authority on the subject.

It is a tragedy beyond reckoning and humanity needs to pay attention to the plight of the elephants before it is too late.

In the past few years an epic surge in poaching has resumed the killing, thanks to the penchant for ivory in the Asian market -- especially in China, where ivory is now selling for over $1500 a kilo.

Recently, Julius Kipng'etich, the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, made a plea at the Library of Congress in Washington in an unprecedented appeal for the world to save Kenya's and Africa's elephants from the plague of poaching that has in recent years seen the decimation of tens of thousands of them.

----- clip

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, John Scanlon, the secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and Sen. John Kerry underscored not only the implications of elephant and wildlife poaching, but also the criminal syndicates who make billions on the illegal wildlife trade, as well as its impact on local populations in Africa, global security and even terrorism.

An urgent and concerted international will is needed to fund law enforcement to protect what remains of the elephant population of the world. more at link..

[flamingdem]

4. I just posted a NYT article in Good Reads section that says Hillary

Clinton is pressuring the Chinese on this

[stuntcat]

5. Good!

This morning I heard them say on npr some things she was pressuring China about and they didn't even mention about this.
This is why I quit being a npr member. They almost never tell what's happening. If it's war or economy or cultural they're all over it, but there's too much happening to the actual physical world that they'll never even mention.

anyway ty