The Last Giants by Levison Wood

Author:Levison Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-10-20T21:09:02+00:00

8

Poaching, Ivory and Trade

My grandfather, the same one who used to take me on a blindfolded journey into the ‘elephant graveyard’ as a child, was also an unwitting contributor to the deaths of unknown numbers of elephants himself.

He was the proud owner of an old 1920 knock-off Steinway upright piano that, of course, had ivory keys. He also had a number of horn- and ivory-hilted knives and forks, part of his prized collection. He wasn’t alone. Until the 1950s, before the widespread use of plastic, most keyboards had ivory keys, and ivory was a fashionable accessory for jewellery and decorative art, highly prized by all classes around the world. It was this trade that ultimately led to the rapid decimation of elephant numbers and it would be impossible to fully understand the plight of elephants today without considering the importance of that trade, both legal and illegal, over the course of the last century.

As we have already seen, the ivory trade has reduced the total African elephant population from many millions to a little over 400,000 individuals – less than the human population of a mid-sized city like Bristol. Whilst the mass killing of elephants has mostly been illegal in the last half century, the international trade in ivory was only outlawed in 1989.

Since then, two ‘one-off’ (yes, a total oxymoron) international sales of ivory have been permitted, in 1999 and 2008, between a few countries, as we shall see below. And domestic trade within countries has been largely legal. Domestic ivory trading bans have only been enacted very recently in a handful of countries, including the UK, which introduced domestic ivory trade legislation in 2018.

But if international trade in ivory is illegal, and domestic trade is increasingly being curbed, why are we currently living through another elephant poaching crisis? Why did poaching surge again from 2008? Why did 40,000 elephants die in 2011? And why have more than 600,000 kg of ivory tusks been seized in illegal shipments to Asia, Europe and the US in the years since the 1989 ban?††

The illegal wildlife trade – of which ivory is a part – is one of the principal threats to wildlife in Africa. The trade is currently the fourth or fifth largest international criminal industry after drugs, counterfeiting and human trafficking, and is worth as much as US$23 billion per year according to the UN. It’s around the same as, if not more lucrative than, the illegal arms trade. Not only does the trade threaten the existence of species, but also international security, national sovereignties and impoverished rural communities.

Understanding – and controlling – the ivory trade is no simple feat. We need to consider the trade from all angles; from the poachers and the opposing individuals and agencies charged with protecting elephants on the ground, to the people coordinating the mass movement of illegal produce, and the consumers who fuel the trade by buying ivory. But of course, we also need to consider the trade from the elephants’ perspective as well.

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