Elephants Habitat Threatened
Filed Under Angel Animals |
Following on from my last post Dog Rescue in the UK, which covered some of the things that are being done to alleviate the problems with stray dogs in the UK, I’ll now turn my attention to the plight of the elephants.
Elephants are without doubt the largest land animals alive on this planet of ours. They need plenty of open space in order to give them free range to roam and graze. Elephants have seasonal migration routes that cover many hundreds of miles.
The problems the elephants face at present is that as the human populations rises, land that was originally wide open and free for elephants to cross is gradually being cleared for agricultural purposes as well as other kinds of human development.
Habitat loss for the elephants will mean that this already endangered species will ultimately end up sharing ever smaller tracts of land in constantly decreasing areas. In the natural world, apart from human interference, it is common for elephants and their close relatives the rhinos to clash with one another when they are forced into close proximity with one another. Another problem is that when animals are effectively trapped together on small, restrictive areas of land, it has the devastating effect of restricting the gene pool as well as resulting in shortages of food and water.
Where elephant reserves come into close proximity with human agricultural areas, the elephants are naturally tempted to leave their reserves and parks to raid crops and grain stores. a mature elephant As male elephants can weigh in the region of 6,000kg only the very sturdiest walls will stop one from breaking through, so farmers have many problems protecting their fields and crops.
These problems are not restricted to the African elephant reserves. In India, the elephants don’t just raid farms and stores for food. Some have interestingly developed a taste for the locally brewed rice beer and set off on drunken rampages through villages and other human populated areas. In the Assam region, conflict between elephants and humans has resulted in more than 150 people killed as well as over 200 elephants also killed in the space of just two years.
The dilemma is that where human communities struggle to grow barely enough for themselves to eat, marauding elephants are not tolerated and so are shot, speared or even poisoned. This latter practice does terrible damage as it also affects other wildlife that scavenges the poisoned meat left for the elephants.
Further problems arise when human poverty leads to the elephants being slaughtered for meat. This is a real problem in regions in central Africa. Here elephant carcasses have been discovered completely stripped of flesh, but with the valuable tusks left intact.
When people do not have enough food and their own country’s governments simply cannot or will not afford to enforce the necessary poaching bans, the outcome can easily be predicted.
There is another constant threat to the swindling elephant population: Ivory.
Ivory is derived directly from elephant tusk. The tusks are simply oversized incisors which may grow to be up to 3m long and both male and female African elephants can grow large tusks.
It is a damning indictment on mankind that during the 1970s and 80s, with demand for ivory still very high, the poaching of elephant tusks contributed to drastically reducing the elephant population from around 1.3 million to a mere 600,000. During this time, a thousand elephants were being killed every week by poachers.
Thankfully, this sickening trade in African elephant ivory was eventually banned in 1990 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). However, the poaching still continues and there is some evidence to suggest it is on the increase.
Most new ivory has its source in Africa. It is sold as a material of high status in some Asian countries such as Thailand, China (mainland) and Japan. The ivory is carved to produce merchandise ranging from ornaments to chopsticks and ink stamps.
The conservation priority has to change public attitudes.
But in some southern African countries where conservation efforts have been successful, an incredible problem arises. As there is a lack of room for the growing elephant population the animals have to be culled.
A meeting in November 2002 of CITES ruled that the countries Botswana, Namibia and South Africa can sell stockpiled ivory, commencing in 2004.
Conservationists are convinced that this lunacy actually fuels the demand for ivory and will simply leads to more poaching. It is impossible to tell the difference between legal and poached ivory. However, in typical government speak, they argue that the legal ivory sales actually fund conservation work.
Does that argument make sense to an intelligent, free thinking human mind? I don’t think so. Only a fool would believe that political language engineered claptrap.
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