Elephants are some of the most majestic animals in the animal kingdom and are mostly found in Africa and Asia. However, their most majestic feature of tusks has become the prime reason of their poaching. The money from the illegal ivory trade has been known to be used in many things including funding of terrorist organizations. However, one brave journalist decided to do something about it and came up with a brilliant idea. Read the article to know more about this illegal killing of elephants and ivory trade.
Africa is fast losing its elephants thanks to illegal poaching by armed groups who kill these majestic beasts in order to get their tusks and sell them on international ivory trade. More than 30,000 elephants are killed every year in order to satiate the need for ivory in black market. Ivory is used in making medicines in Asian countries like China, since they are thought to have magical healing properties. A pair of ivory chopsticks can fetch a poor African poacher more than $1,000, while carved tusks go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, one journalist has come up with a brilliant idea to counter this illegal trade and save the hapless animals.
Image Source: www.geography.name
The journalist is Bryan Christy who works for National Geographic, who covers wild life in Central Africa. He was shocked to know that the population of elephants in the wild had fallen by 64% in last 10 years. He decided to uncover the whole process of how elephants are slaughtered in order to get their tusks and his work even landed him in jail. His investigative report was first published in 2015. After gathering his information, he came up with a brilliant idea to counter this trade. Click next to know what the idea was.
Image Source: www.nationalgeographic.com
Christy came up with an idea to install GPS trackers in order to see where the tusks goes after it is cut from the elephant. Christy went looking for someone who would make fake tusks for him and ultimately found a taxidermist who worked for museum. The team of Christy and the taxidermist and his people made lots of fake tusks and Christy was caught at the airport in Tanzania carrying the same tusks. His trackers told him that the tusks confiscated from him were taken to South Sudan and buried underground. Watch the video of his findings in the next slide.
Image Source: www.nationalgeographic.com
Bryan covered the whole story in National Geographic titled “Tracking Ivory”, in which he wrote, “"Poorly equipped park rangers try to defend poachers. In central Africa, as I learned firsthand, something more sinister is driving the killing: Militias and terrorist groups funded in part by ivory are poaching elephants, often outside their home countries, and hiding them in national parks. They're looting communities, enslaving people, and killing park rangers who get in their way.” He even found out that the funds received from this ivory trade financed many terrorist organizations. Most of the ivory landed in China, where it was sold for millions of dollars.
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