Follow Up: Elephant Poaching and the Ivory Trade

“It is difficult to know exactly how many people have died.”

This weekend the New York Times posted another article about elephant poaching and the ivory trade. While not an extension of the article described in my blog post from September 12^th, it does further investigate the consequences of such a lucrative “sport.” The author of the Op-Ed column, Louisa Lombard, examines the loss of human life in addition to that of the majestic elephant.

The spoils of an ivory seizure in Kenya. The 1,550-plus pounds of ivory, valued at an approximately $750,000 US dollars, was guessed to have come from 50 adult male elephants. DNA testing can be used to determine from where the elephants had originated. 

Photo credit: http://www.awf.org/blog/huge-ivory-seizure-two-men-arrested/ 

One of the most sobering figures in her article is the lack thereof. As the first line of this post implies, no one knows exactly how many people have lost their lives by getting involved on either side of the war for ivory. Some groups keep track of how many guards are lost. No one even attempts to record the number of poachers killed.

What can be done to effectively stop the slaughter of both human and elephant life in the name of ivory? Lombard acknowledges that “human management” of the crisis (ie wildlife conservation) is relatively futile. She instead claims that, “curbing the demand for ivory is, in the end, the only way to curb both elephant and people life.” Yet I do not understand how such reduction in demand is possible. The countries with the highest demand for ivory cherish it for its religious connotations, not its construction properties or beauty.

Intricately carved ivory religious figurines. The notion that ivory honors God is evident in Buddhism and Catholicism.

Photo credit: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/19/illegal_ivory_trade_in_thailand/

Asking the Chinese to relinquish their love of ivory equates to asking Americans to omit “one nation under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance: it’s simply not going to happen.

I wholeheartedly support freedom of religion (though I myself am unreligious). But in a situation like this, where religion is tied up in other global conflicts, I feel hypocritical. Pretend such ivory demand existed in the United States. I believe I would advocate for regulations restricting the import and sale of ivory, whether it be used for religious purposes, piano keys, trinkets, etc in order to protect the elephants. But if ivory is believed by some religions to honor God, then are restrictions on its import and sale a violation of the First Amendment? Is asking a person to reconsider what he or she uses to honor God imposing upon his or her religious freedom? To me, it feels like it does.

In that case, how do we attempt to balance the two?  One solution I thought of was using elephant meat to feed starving villages. At least in that respect, the death of an elephant serves a bigger purpose than fueling the ivory trade. Yet that solution fails to protect elephants as a species and inevitably would create a whole assortment of other problems.  No answer will be the perfect solution. Sadly, more humans and elephants will have to die until that solution emerges.