I don't think the poaching problem in Africa has been portrayed as a real problem to the general public. The majority of poaching is done to fuel the growing demand in the East, especially China, where a rising middle class uses ivory trinkets as a status symbol. But it's been shown that the majority of Chinese people- one paper said about 70%- don't have any idea that elephants have to die to remove the tusks. They think the tusks simply fall off the elephants as part of a natural process and that they can be collected off the ground. How can we decrease demand from the major source of increased poaching when the majority of the people creating the demand are so uneducated about ivory?
It is believed that 25,000 elephants were killed by poachers in 2011. The number is expected to be even higher for 2012. Already in 2013, less than one month in, 12 elephants have already been killed in Kenya in one of the worst single poaching incidents in that country. One of those 12 elephants killed was a two month old baby, who didn't even have any ivory to poach. At this rate, so conservationists have claimed that elephants may be extinct from the wild within 20 years.
The elephant has always been a majestic symbol linked to Africa. It's hard to think of an Africa without elephants. They aren't even just linked to Africa alone anymore, they are part of the human culture. When teaching kids the alphabet, it's always "e is for elephant". We decorate nurseries with cute blue and pink elephant prints. At this rate, we are going to be teaching our kids to love an animal that is only going to be found in a small number of zoos, where their natural majesty and beauty can't be appreciated the way it could be in the wild.
But it's more than just the fact that human greed is trying to extinguish yet another species. This is a species that is supposed to have the lifespan as a human, with the same, if not better, capacities for memory and emotion. Baby elephants orphaned by poaching incidents will stand guard over their fallen families until rescued- if they are lucky enough to be found- where they then usually sink into a deep depression and refuse to eat and lose the will to live. One of the greatest things about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Orphanage is that it allows these grieving elephants to be comforted by others in the same position as them, and usually it is not until these new orphans are comforted by their fellow orphan survivors that they begin to turn the corner. It is nothing short of tragic and despicable that entire families are ripped apart for mere trinkets.
The poaching problem isn't going to get any better until there is a rise in public awareness and there is a shift that makes elephant lives worth more than ivory chopsticks. And I don't want to give the wrong impression here, either- rhinos are dying at alarming rates the same as elephants. I don't know as much about their crisis other than they are also facing extinction if the poaching doesn't stop. One new technique with rhinos is to capture them and saw off their horns before the poachers can shoot them and do it themselves. Of course, while this saves the rhinos life from poaching, it leaves them defenseless against other rhinos and other predators. There is no good answer for this other than to crack down on poaching.
It is upsetting that humans value money more than other life. But until more people are aware of how bad the situation is, nothing is going to change. In the words of Dr. Seuss, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
one of the orphans with one of the keepers at the DSWT orphanage
some of the elephant orphans at the DSWT Orphanage
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