Fight Fake News About Ivory to Turn Around Ivory Ban
As the year comes to a close, the Elephant Protection Association leadership has taken stock of how far we have come and how far we still have to go. We believe it is past time to correct the "fake news" that surrounds ivory in the U.S.
We all know how widespread the falsehoods are, and unfortunately most people do not check the facts before believing and sharing them. The more these untruths are repeated and not corrected, the more easily they are believed. Lets you and I be the voice of truth and reason.
We've all heard the lies...
Illegal ivory is being imported and distributed across America because of our legal market... Each piece of ivory represents a poached elephant... 30,000 elephants a year are belting slaughtered and all elephants are endangered and elephants will be extinct in a decade.
The truth is... The Domestic Ivory Ban is penalizing law-abiding Americans without helping African Elephants. In fact, that and other potential world-wide bans will do more harm to elephants than good, for reasons we explain below.
Together we can push back by getting the truth out there. Calling your legislators is a good start (you can find them on our website,
www.elephantprotection.org), but having an article or letter read by hundreds or thousands of people is much more effective. It doesn't have to be a national publication. It can be your local antiques group, rotary club, Elks Lodge... you get the point.
Most of these outlets are starving for news and articles. Start there, but don't stop there. Your local newspapers and magazines need the truth too. Submit article to them as well and make sure to send letters to the editor when they print lies the other side tells.
Some facts... African elephant poaching peaked in 2011, coinciding with the global market peak for commodity prices that followed the global financial crisis. Investors shifted from plummeting property values and stock markets to raw material and luxury commodities - including ivory. Since that time, elephant poaching has been on the decline. That was the conclusion of internationally recognized elephant expert Dr. Daniel Stiles who led a research team with a New Zealander resource economist, Zimbabwean African elephant specialist and Chinese data collector. They prepared a report funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society, but the WCS disassociated themselves from that report because it did not advance their narratives promoting ivory bans.
Fact... It is not "insatiable consumer demand" for worked ivory that has caused the elephant poaching crisis. It is speculators, mainly Chinese, investing in raw ivory, made much more valuable by the CITES ivory international trade ban. Creating scarcity of a commodity raises its price.
Fact... Cutting off legal ivory supply has created the elephant poaching crisis.
Recently, the IUCN African Elephant Database published its 2016 update of elephant numbers in Africa. Between the survey numbers and extrapolations made about areas they did not survey, they estimated there are between 395,317 and 570,000 elephants living wild in Africa. Other than showing elephants are not currently in danger of extinction, that number standing alone does not say very much because past estimates on the number of elephants in Africa have been based far more on estimates and models than actual counts.
The most significant aspect of this compilation of surveys, which is consistent with every estimate made about elephant populations in Africa, is how elephants are distributed in Africa. In West, Central and East Africa where countries like Kenya already criminalize practically any commercial use of elephants, the numbers of elephants have plummeted. Kenya alone has lost anywhere from 60-80% of its elephant population in the last 40 years or so, and it is one of the more stable countries in the region.
On the other hand, populations in Southern Africa have flourished. Countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe have maintained large and growing populations of elephants with relatively small government expense. They do this by allowing regulated hunting and commercial use of elephants (technically called "sustainable use"), and they regularly seek international approval to sell ivory from naturally fallen elephants in order to support their wildlife reserves and other conservation programs. In fact, the herds of elephants in this region are growing too large for their habitat, so without continued support they will likely decrease due to thirst, starvation or disease.
Ivory is important to elephant conservation because it is a byproduct of large herds of healthy elephants. Mankind has used ivory for millennia because of its unique properties for use in art, music and other industries. Legally obtained ivory is valuable and the proceeds from it can be used to encourage local communities to support and protect the species. That is how programs in Zimbabwe and South Africa have succeeded.
Banning all trade of ivory deprives countries who want to see elephant populations grow of necessary resources to fund that growth. Bans in countries where elephants are truly in danger of extinction makes sense, as it does in countries that willfully smuggle and fund exploitation of poached ivory. However, a world-wide ban strips countries with successful programs of needed resources and eliminates incentives for countries with already depleted populations to try to increase populations.
Ivory bans are backward-looking policies designed to play on people's emotions concerning already-slaughtered elephants. They are reactionary and do nothing to promote new growth in populations where elephants have been lost. However, there's a reason that organizations promote them heavily. They are extremely effective fund-raisers for non-governmental organizations that manipulate people's love of animals. They are not, however, a sustainable means for achieving a balance between wild animals and the people who live with them. Instead, global ivory bans reduce elephants to local nuisances which encourage poaching. Bans are a disincentive to protecting elephants!
The only pro-active suggestion that ivory ban proponents make is to promote wildlife tourism in Africa. Unfortunately, tourism alone is not enough. If it was enough alone, we would not have a reduction in the number of elephants today. Instead, the "tourism will fix it" attitude propagates the naïve and sometimes racist approach of treating Africa like one big wildlife theme park instead of recognizing the diversity of Africa's landscape, political institutions, traditions. It ignores and belittles the African people's need to develop and manage their own resources to help raise them out of poverty.
The Elephant Protection Association recognizes the need for incentives and disincentives - carrots and sticks - to conserve and sustain wildlife. Ivory bans in places like the United States, where there is no significant importation of poached ivory, punishes innocent people who own ivory items made long before the recent surge in elephant poaching without helping elephants in the short term, and very well may condemn them in the long term.
Elephant Protection Association
P.S. - Recent reports that Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers will be the next Secretary of the Interior is good news. You can check out how she is rated by a wide variety of groups at
https://votesmart.org/candidate/evaluations/3217/cathy-mcmorris-rodgers#.WE7uArIrJhF along with specifics of her voting record. In a nutshell, Animal Rights groups like HSUS give her very low ratings (11%), while groups like Sportsmen's and Animal Owners' Voting Alliance rate her highly (100%). This is consistent with pro-sustainable use and pro-small business policies we expect to see from Trump administration leadership.
