{"id":54,"date":"2014-03-29T23:03:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-30T06:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2014-04-01T17:42:37","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T00:42:37","slug":"elephant-poaching","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/elephant-poaching\/","title":{"rendered":"ELEPHANT POACHING"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What is Ivory?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Elephant ivory comes from both male and female modified incisors. An African elephant tusk continues to grow over it&#8217;s lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>Elephant Ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for decades and was used as a value of status and wealth.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/eia-international.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ivory-on-sale-in-China-c-EIA-700x391.jpg\" width=\"700\" height=\"391\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Today elephant ivory is used for items such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Piano Keys<\/li>\n<li>Billiard balls<\/li>\n<li>Sculpture carvings<\/li>\n<li>Other expressions of wealth<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is elephant poaching?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ivory hunters had been responsible for the extinction of elephants in\u00a0North Africa, much of South Africa and most of West Africa by the end of the 20th century.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1970s, demand for ivory soared and the amount of ivory leaving Africa rose to high levels.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the ivory leaving Africa was taken illegally and over 80% of all the raw ivory traded came from poached elephants.\u00a0Around 75,000 African elephants were killed for the ivory trade annually, worth around 1 billion dollars.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1980s Ivory Demand- Japan consumed about 40% of the global trade.<br \/>\nAnother 40% was consumed by Europe and North America.<br \/>\n20% of the rest remaining in Africa.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0Ivory is highly prized as a &#8220;white gold&#8221; in Asian countries where a growing middle class is seeking safe investments.<\/li>\n<li>Currently- Prices of ivory in China have soared to as high as US$7,000 a kilogram in 2011 from US$157 a kilo in 2008.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Who is involved in poaching?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the past, elephant hunting in Africa was seen as a sport for noblemen and colonial governors.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/d\/dd\/Fang_traders_with_ivory.jpg\" width=\"760\" height=\"590\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After a ban on international ivory trade by\u00a0The\u00a0Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Much of the ivory trading was operated by well-armed elephant poachers and illegal ivory operations, poverty is the primary driver of poaching in Africa.<\/li>\n<li>Crime networks in both Africa and China are behind much of this poaching activity.<\/li>\n<li>Kenya has emerged as a major transit route for ivory destined for Asian markets from eastern and central Africa.<\/li>\n<li>The government says poaching is harming tourism, which is a major foreign exchange earner.<\/li>\n<li>Over 1,000 park officers have been killed within the last decade by poachers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Methods involved in poaching<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Poachers use multiple methods to capture and kill elephants.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To locate elephants poachers use\u00a0local trackers to find elephant populations (through use of helicopter&#8230;etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Methods to poach elephants include uses of cable snares, spike traps, and silenced weapons.<\/li>\n<li>Poachers will often lace waterholes and salt licks with cyanide.<\/li>\n<li>After the elephant is caught the ivory is removed from the skull and taken. The remaining carcass is left on the savannah or burned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is Ivory? Elephant ivory comes from both male and female modified incisors. An African elephant tusk continues to grow over it&#8217;s lifetime. Elephant Ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for decades and was used as a value of status and wealth. Today elephant ivory is used for items such as: Piano Keys [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23861,"featured_media":31,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/corinnedy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}