African elephants are amongst the most symbolic animals in Africa. But soon they may be only history, for poachers have come up with the diabolic idea of putting cyanide in the watering holes to get more ivory from poisoned elephants. This has increased the death toll of not only elephants but also any animal that comes to drink water at the hole.
According to Animal Global, 36,000 elephants were killed in 2012 this way. Scientists believe that at this pace of destruction, African elephants might disappear in less than 12 years!
Vultures know what to do with the body a dead elephant. These scanvengers play a very important role in the well-being of the natural ecosystems. They are adapted to feeding upon decomposing animal matter and by doing so they get rid of any sourceof pathogens and disease. In other words, vultures help keep the whole ecosystem clean and fit.
Furthermore, vultures arelinks and channels for the energy flux in thefood web.They are not only the cleaning crew in nature but also the transformers of matter in the ecosystem. Andtheir ecological services are free of charge. So dead elephants in vulture beaks are spokes of the wheel of life and keep it spinning along with the other living creatures on this planet(Video 1).
Video 1. Vultures feeding on an elephant carcass.
Enter humans in the
picture and what you get is a totally different equation.
This "wise" primate
could very well be the guardian of life on Earth but instead he has become the major agent of nature destruction wherever he pokes his
nose into. Humans are generally speaking spokes of the wheel of death.
Thus,elephants in human handsbecome objects of greediness, business and sport inunnecesary bloodshed (Video 2-3).
Video 2. Butchering of an elephant by people.
Video 3. Ivory trade in Africa.
Humans are like maggots on this planet. They eat, disturb and contaminate the natural world and their pollution disrupts life cycles in any ecosystem whereas vulturescontribute to the maintenance of the temple of life.
Thank God there are exceptions, people who make elephants living monuments of admiration, for these pachyderms are indeed other nations and as such they do deserve our deepest respect.
Let us not forgetthat the elephant´s pain is also our pain.
Every day across Africa, wild elephants are being slaughtered to meet the
insatiable demand for ivory. Entire herds are being poached out of existence to
supply the illegal trade of ivory carvings and trinkets in Asia.
The scale of illicit activity is staggering in places like Thailand. Poachers
and organized crime syndicates there are making millions of dollars a year,
turning this southeast Asian nation into the largest unregulated ivory market in
the world.
On March 3, Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra stood before a
crowded hall of delegates attending the opening of an international wildlife
trade meeting and told the world that her country will end the trade of ivory in
Thailand. This is an enormous step forward in the fight to stop wildlife crime.
But there is more to be done.
Please help keep up the pressure to ensure that this promise becomes a
reality. Join the "Hands Off My Parts" movement to stop wildlife crime. Sign
today HERE
BANGKOK (AP) — Top conservation organizations warned Wednesday that the
illegal ivory trade is hastening the decline of Africa’s already endangered
elephant population, and said they are ready to punish nations that are lax in
fighting the problem.
“Globally, illegal ivory trade activity has more than doubled since 2007, and
is now over three times larger than it was in 1998,” said a report issued in
Bangkok at a meeting of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species.
CITES has put three African and five Asian nations on notice that they have
failed to adequately crack down on the ivory trade, and that by next week they
must come up with a detailed and credible plan of action for curbing the trade
across and within their borders. They must also meet those targets or face trade
sanctions next year.
The nations threatened with sanctions are Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam,
Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and China. Sanctions would keep those nations
from trading even in legal wildlife products by barring other CITES member
nations from buying from them.
A CITES-led project that monitors about 40 percent of Africa’s elephant
population estimated that 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011, and
the numbers are probably the same or greater for last year, said the report,
produced by CITES, the U.N. Environment Program, the International Union for
Conservation of Nature, and the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, better known
as TRAFFIC.
The report said the increased poaching and loss of habitat threaten the
survival of elephant populations in Central Africa and undermine previously more
secure populations in West, Southern and East Africa. Curbing the ivory trade is a major topic for the CITES meeting, attended by
about 2,000 delegates representing 178 governments, businesses, non-governmental
organizations and groups speaking for indigenous peoples.
The report, “Elephants in the Dust — The African Elephant Crisis,” said
criminal networks are increasingly active and entrenched in the trafficking of
ivory between Africa and Asia. “Training of enforcement officers in the use of
tracking, intelligence networks and innovative techniques, such as forensic
analysis, is urgently needed,” it said.
Officials from the conservation groups said CITES is also putting pressure on
governments of nations found to be key links in the chain of the illegal ivory
trade.
Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s ivory expert, said he hopes the current CITES meeting
will hold accountable those countries that are “serious offenders.” He said it
was very evident that “unregulated domestic ivory markets continue to fester in
many places.”
“Where there is not action to address this issue I am hopeful that the CITES
parties will move forward with sanctions that would suspend trade in wildlife
with those countries,” Milliken told reporters.
Thailand is one of the countries that could be badly hurt by sanctions. It
conducts a profitable legal trade in several wildlife items, especially orchids
and farmed crocodile products. In addressing the opening of the CITES
conference, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra declared the country was
committed to stamping out the trade, but spoke in vague terms.
“We were warned about the sanctions but we already reported back to them and
presented our plans,” Theerapat Prayurasiddhi, deputy director-general of
Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, told
The Associated Press. “They said the plans were decent but they wanted us to set
the timeframe. Now we’re fixing it and will get back to them by the end of the
conference.”
He said he was confident Thailand would not be sanctioned.
“I have to say that all countries must help to solve the problem,” Theerapat
said. “I insist that Thailand is merely a transit country. More effort is needed
at the countries of origin and the end countries. We have to help each other to
protect the elephant population. It’s the basic rule of supply and
demand.”
