The Killing fields of Ivory

THE KILLING FIELDS OF VORY memuco.net Two legal sales of ivory stockpiles have failed to stem the flow of illegal ivory to East Asia, especially to China. In fact, the opposite has occurred, with the sales stimu- lating the market and contributing to an increase in illegal ivory flows and the poaching of elephants. The single biggest threat to elephants is now the largest regulateed domestic market. ELEPHANTS KILLED IN THE LAST YEAR 25,000 (National Goographic) ASIAN COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST VORY SEIZED 1989-2011 LARGE SCALE VORY SEIZURE CHINA 90,600 2009-20011 Unit: Pounds Share of shipments by weight COUNTRIES HONG OF ORIGIN KONG THAI- TAIWAN 45,500 4ZANDO 40,500 PHILIP- PINES VIETNAM MALAYSIA 29,600 INDIA SINGAPORE JAPAN 23,500 Tanzania 14.900 17,700 18,800 19,900 Unknown EQUVALENT OF NUMBER ELEPHANTS KILLED FROM EACH COUNTRY Cameroon 630 810 810 900 1,080 1,350 1,800 2,160 2,700 4,050 Uganda 17 Nigeria Zimbawe S. Africa 16,290 APROXIMATE NUMBER OF MASSA- CRED ELEPHANTS IN THIS SEIZED VORY Kenya VORY SEIZED, 2008-2012 POACING BECOMING MORE IN- TENSE, MORE AGGRESIVE 34.7 cm Thousands of Kg 73,294kg 300 80 Amount in Ivory seized by year in Kg Cumulative Ivory seized total in Kg 70 tons 60 Same as 7,329 dead ele- phants Of Ivory seized globally in 2011 Elephants perished when horsemen from Chad and Sudan came In to Cameroon armed with AK-47 and rocket popelled grenades. Whole families of elephants where massacred 30 20 Using the Interpol method which says that you can basically expect to confiscate 10 5000 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Total 10% YTD acumulated PROPORTIONS KILLED IN MIKE SITES % About the number of elephant that died out- side Noualbalé-Ndoki National Park in Congo lower and upper bounds of estimated propor- tions of elephants populations Illegally Killed an- nually in reported MIKE sites between 2005 and 2011 of actual smuggling, and assuming that each elephant carries 22 pounds of Ivory gives us the number of 22 31,500 11.5% 12 poachers hovered in a helicopter over a herd of elephants and opened fire with semi-automatic weapons killing the entire elephants in the herd. dead elephants...like this one 3.5% Now poachers are using poisoned watermelons to kill elephants but x 31500 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 This is worse than reading a horror book IVORY ON THE WEB In 2011, the International Fund for Animal Welfare con ducted an investigation to search for places that sold ivory items in the world wide web from 5 European co tries. Portugal, Spain, Germany, UK, France Iconic elephants populations of famous protected areas are exhibiting extreme proportions of illegally killed elephants that spell potential doom for those elephant populations. investigators tracked For example Selous Game Re- Ruaha 669 serve Murchison Rungwa at 94% Falls at 92% 63% In March there will be a 63% meeting with CITES about the Elephants future. I hope online auctions and advertisements me MEMUCO PUBLIC BROADÇAST SYSTEM they make the right desicion National geographic. The New York Times, CITES http://www.savetheclephants.org/http://www.cites.org/savethelephants.org/nternationa fund for animal welfare