The UK and EU, the world’s largest exporters of legal ivory, have been accused of not doing enough to save Africa’s fast disappearing elephant populations. “This is the last chance saloon to save elephants,” said UK Labour MP Justin Madders at a meeting at Westminster Hall on Monday where more than 30 MPs on both […]
Tag: ivory trade
POLL: Should the slaughter of Borneo’s pygmy elephants be stopped?
Even the planet’s smallest elephants, tucked away on the island of Borneo, are no longer immune to the global poaching crisis for ivory. On New Year’s Eve, wildlife officials in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, found the bones of a beloved male elephant, nicknamed Sabre for his unusual tusks that slanted downwards like the extinct sabre-toothed tiger’s […]
China to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017
China will shut down its domestic ivory trade by the end of 2017, according to an announcement made today by the Chinese government. The announcement comes more than a year after China’s President Xi Jinping and United States President Barack Obama pledged to enact “nearly complete bans” on the import and export of ivory, an […]
POLL: Should the illegal trade in hippo teeth be stopped?
Kampala, Uganda – Investigators posing as buyers lured the suspects to a lodge near Buliisa, a town in western Uganda, as night set in. The two men arrived by motorbike with the contraband concealed inside a nylon sack. “They requested for me to take [the sack] inside a room,” one of the men, Fred Byenkya, […]
Video: The Ivory Game – timely account of elephants’ death throes
It is obviously more than a game and this documentary directed by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani – and exec-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio – showing on Netflix, brings a new urgency to an old subject: the ivory trade, which is threatening the world’s elephants. This threat has not been cancelled or brought under control, as […]
POLL: Should there be a worldwide ban on the ivory trade?
The UK is putting elephants at risk of extinction through its broken promises on the ivory trade, according to campaigners. Before the last election, the Conservative party pledged to shut down the UK’s domestic ivory market: at the time 30,000 elephants a year were being slaughtered for their tusks. But no action has been taken. […]
POLL: Should the sale of elephant ivory be legalized?
World Elephant Day was not necessarily good news for Africa’s elephants: Pressure is mounting in southern Africa to lift the ban on the sale of ivory. In the mid-1980s, during the last great elephant poaching crisis, Africa lost nearly half its elephant population, roughly 600,000 animals, in a decade. But the world responded in 1989 […]
POLL: Should the EU support a total ban on the ivory trade?
Wildlife officials in nearly 30 African states say they are appalled by an EU decision to oppose a comprehensive global ban on the ivory trade. In a position paper released on 1 July, the European commission said that rather than an all-encompassing ban it would be better to encourage countries with growing elephant numbers to […]