Same old, same old

On Facebook this week the Zoological Society of London had a brief post with a fact that both astonished and saddened me. One Elephant is poached every 20 minutes in Africa.

This figure jumped out at me. The trade in ivory seems just as strong today as it was in my youth. It feels as if nothing has changed in the past 30 years. In the 1930’s there were an estimated Five million elephants in Africa today this is now just 600,000.

A quick google search has unveiled a range of infographics that help put the plight of the elephant into focus.

This infographic illustrates the decline of elephant populations in Tanzania. Where once poaching, habitat loss and human conflict resulted in losses up until 1989. Today however poaching is once more on the rise.

This infographic illustrates the steep rise in illegal killings most of which were to provide ivory for markets in the east.

This last infographic shows the route of the ivory trade. As you can see, even today and even with CITIES protection ivory is still traded to Great Britain.

Earlier this year China banned its domestic trade in ivory. This on the face of it would be excellent news but the fact is that this so far has not translated into a reduction in poaching. It is possible that the illegal markets are still viable economically or that people are stockpiling the ivory in the hope that they can control the trade for greater profit.

It all well and good castigating Africa and China for the ivory poaching. It's hard to deny an African man with a family to support the value a single tusk. An integrated approach is needed, not only must trade be curtailed by stopping the poachers but we need to address the socio-economic factors that make it more profitable for poachers to kill elephants to make money. We need to continue to reduce the market like China has by banning the use of ivory. But what about the UK, are we leading the way... far from it. We still allow certain trade in elephant ivory and plans to ban ivory sales were quietly dropped by Theresa May in the last Conservative Manifesto. This is still an important issue and it is possible that the African Elephant could still go extinct in my life-time, one of the last of this planets mega-fauna.

For anyone interested, they really should look up Hugh's Ivory War shown last year on BBC -Trailer

Unfortunately it is no longer available on I-player but there are links and clips.