The Ultimate Price of Ivory

As an international convention decides what to do with over 100 tons of old ivory, the slaughter of elephants in Africa continues

African elephants are quickly disappearing to the ivory trade. With less than 500,000 remaining, their numbers have been reduced to just 35 percent of what they were 1980, mostly to supply consumer demand for ivory in China, Japan and Thailand.

This week, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) will decide whether to grant requests by Tanzania and Zambia to reduce the protection status of their elephants so that they can offload 112 tons of their stockpiled ivory with a one-time sale.

Kenya and Mali, on the other hand, are leading a group of African nations calling for a 20-year ban on ivory exports, arguing that any legal trading encourages poaching, which has lately been on the rise.

An international team of 27 conservationists has weighed in on the debate, writing in the March 12 edition of the journal Science that permitting the sale could lead to increased slaughter of elephants throughout the continent, according to ScienceDaily.com.

The scientists point to Tanzania and Zambia as major corridors for the illegal ivory trade, citing DNA evidence of ivory seized in 2002 and 2006 that traces back to the two countries.

"These two countries are at the center of the illegal ivory trade in Africa. It's kind of unbelievable that their requests have gotten this far," said Samuel Wasser, a University of Washington conservation biologist and lead author of the Science paper.

As CITES debates the request of Tanzania and Zambia, they must remember the main question: Do we want elephants or ivory? Because in the end, we can't have both.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign an Avaaz.org petition urging the 175 parties of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to reject any exemptions in the global ban on the ivory trade, to extend that ban for at least 20 years, and to take all necessary steps to enforce that ban and protect the elephants
• Sign a Care2 petition to permanently ban the sale of ivory
  
• Sign a petition urging eBay to ban all ivory sales on its site
• Adopt an elephant from the World Wildlife Fund for $25
• Donate to Save the Elephants

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image: The tusks and face of an elephant killed for its ivory lie on the ground in an African forest (credit: Karl Ammann).