Today is World Elephant Day, and conservationists have petitioned Tanzania to stop issuing permits for the trophy hunting of the gentle and intelligent pachyderms.<\/p>\n
Wild African elephants \u2014 including the \u201csuper-tuskers\u201d who are hunted for their ivory tusks \u2014 roam freely across the border into Tanzania from Kenya\u2019s Amboseli National Park, where their vast herds are protected from poachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss of these elephants is not just a blow to elephant populations but to our collective efforts in conservation,\u201d said Cynthia Moss, Amboseli Trust for Elephants founder, as Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
Roughly 2,000 elephants roam the Amboseli in Kenya and Tanzania\u2019s Enduimet Wildlife Management Area. Tanzania\u2019s allowance of the blood sport has led to instances where hunters have killed Kenyan elephants across the border.<\/p>\n
According to conservationists, the Amboseli ecosystem has the highest density of super-tuskers who have tusks weighing close to 100 pounds, but just 10 of these great animals remain.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunting could cause the super-tuskers to disappear within the next three years,\u201d the petition said, as reported by Reuters.<\/p>\n
In 1995, both countries made an agreement that Tanzania would cease the issue of hunting permits following Kenyan elephants being killed by hunters on the Tanzanian side of the wildlife reserve. But in 2002, Tanzania began issuing the permits again, according to the petition.<\/p>\n
\u201cElephants are simply one more natural resource that is being caught up in human greed on the one hand and human need on the other. We somehow need people to become reacquainted with nature or they can have no clue as to the interrelatedness of cause and effect,\u201d said Dr. Stephen Blake, a scientist with the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, on the World Elephant Day website.<\/p>\n
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