Elephant conservation and ivory ban

Résumé du document

Sir David Attenborough once said, 'the question is, are we happy to suppose that our grand children may never be able to see an elephant except in picture books?'. Elephants used to be widespread all over Africa, but the largest of all mammals has been in trouble for several decades now. Indeed, despite their countless qualities, elephants are poached for the ivory of their tusks. Because the number of elephants are declining at an alarming rate due to poaching, some actions have been engaged to preserve them, but a controversy persists between the Southern countries and the Eastern countries of Africa over ivory ban. Several reasons explain the declining number of elephants in Africa. The population has grown very fast, so, according to the pressure of the human population, farmers have to kill the elephants for feeding the Africans. Moreover, there is a lot of poverty in Africa and there has been a real opportunity in ivory trade, because rich countries have a demand for ivory products.

Extraits

[...] This made the population get angry toward the beast. On the other hand, Southern countries argue on the economic point. In fact, ivory trade is a source of economic benefits. They advance that elephant are a natural resource as the gold or the oil of the neighbors, and that the selling of ivory could be invested for the basic needs of the population, like education, or in conservation program for the future. They argue for the trade of controlled ivory resulting from natural death and controlled culling of problem animals. [...]

[...] In one hand there is the corruption present in most of African countries. There is no one to enforce the law, the government is involved in the killing, and the park rangers kill the elephants they were supposed to protect. On the other hand, there are civil wars in many African countries. For example, in Angola, rebel forces sell ivory to help finance their military campaign. African governments had to work together to control the trade and stop the killing. [...]

[...] But some Southern countries including Botswana and Zimbabwe voted against the ban and continued the poaching. Therefore, the ban succeeded in reversing the decline but there were still poaching in several countries. Nowadays, Southern countries are still the center of a controversial debate. Southern countries want now to lift the ban. They argue with several supporting points. On one hand they focus on the conservation program. For example, Zimbabwe has continued hunting and managed herds carefully, so its elephant population had grown. [...]

[...] Eastern countries have also another argument to keep the ban. It is an economic reason, tourism. Eastern countries need the elephants for tourism and for the heritage. And last but not least, history shows that money from elephants doesn't go to conservation or poor people. In 1980s only 10% of the sales went to the poor and most to the dealers, the corrupted middlemen and the corrupted officials. African elephant population has seen its number declining during decades, and that made the whole world stand up to take protective measures against the massacre, but the question stays. [...]

[...] The demand makes the price of ivory go up at a phenomenal rate. So, poor countries, especially those which only have few minerals, have been attracted by poaching. Also, in those countries, ivory is the only way to get rich, indeed, one or two years of salary are earn for only one pair of tusk. Therefore, the poaching of the elephants started in the 19th century with the “Great White Hunter”. In 1930, there were 5 to 10 millions of elephants, but during the 1980s, hundreds of elephants were killed each year, and the killing reached the step of dead elephants in 1989. [...]