Fewer than half a million elephants now remain in the savannahs and jungles of Africa – a 95% plunge in the last century. Experts believe that 35,000 – 50,000 elephants are being slaughtered each year to satisfy surging demand from Asia and the United States (La Fontaine, 2014).
Elephants, like every animal within an ecosystem, benefit other species. They create watering holes with their tusks which enables other species to survive these dry climates especially during droughts (Save the Elephants, 2017).
European colonialism, through leisure and survival means, started poaching but additionally led to an awareness and necessary means to conserve and protect elephants in order to elongate the sustainable ivory trade. In 1900 a conference of colonial powers in London agreed on policies “to exclude Africans from hunting in most colonies, such as the creation of protected reserves.” Yet illegal and legal trade continued bolstered by corruption that gained revenues to the salesman and governments at the expense of alienating communities (Lawson, 2017).
The 1989 CITES ban on ivory trade only further reinstated the high demand. China, a country with a notably high demand for ivory, prohibited its illegal ivory trade as of 2017, which sent a powerful message from what was such a prominent selling place for ivory.
Who’s buying the ivory
When the subject is low the demand and price become simultaneously higher.
“The less elephants there are the more the price rises. Trades in ivory actually want the extinction of elephants”
(The Ivory Game, 19:14)
A test done by National Geographic and Globescan across 5 countries proved the motives of consumerism:
Likely buyers across all countries were low income to middle income brackets and describe themselves as “fashionable and social and attracted most [to the ivory] because of the perceived power and status that ivory confers on owners”
Every country also had the majority (average of approximately 67%) supported a government ban on buying, selling, importing and exporting ivory. (Globescan, 2015).
Tourism Effects
Elephants are renowned for being a main attraction when envisioning a safari. Poaching and the danger it entails however, has had a negative impact on tourism and its economic benefits.
A recent study showed an estimate that across Africa the annual direct economic losses from reduced Protected Area visitation as a result of elephant poaching runs to a mean of $9.1 million.
Surveys have proven that elephants are among the most desired of African wildlife species for tourist viewing, suggesting that the decline in elephants from poaching drive tourism losses (Naidoo, Fisher, 2016).