China’s demand for luxury knickknacks lies beneath some spectacular carnage of late. The illegal ivory trade funds al-Shabaab, the terrorist group behind the Westgate Mall massacre in Kenya late last month. Al-Shabaab finances as much as 40% of its operations this way. The supply of ivory for al-Shabaab and other militant groups is, obviously, dead elephants. As demand for ivory continues to surge in China and other Asian countries, the slaughter is growing industrial in scale and efficiency, fueling a trade worth $7 billion to $10 billion a year. Take for instance what’s going on in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. In what may be the single worst poaching incident in Africa in recorded history, so far, official data says 90 elephants have died from cyanide used to poison salt licks at watering holes. The actual death toll could be as high as 100. And the brutality isn’t limited to elephants. The cyanide has killed large though at this stage untallied numbers of lions, cheetahs, zebras, wildebeest, and scores of other species caught in the proverbial crossfire. Vultures, which typically feed on animal carcasses, are dying too. The Hwange mass slaughter reflects a larger trend of “industrial” killing carried out by heavily armed groups, not just impoverished local hunters. As many as 50,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2011, the last year with reliable data. That means poachers are wiping out 7.4% of the elephant population a year at a minimum, faster than the rate at which they reproduce. The weird thing is that, as far as enforcement goes, it’s illegal to kill elephants and sell their tusks. But not necessarily to buy their tusks. That’s because, in 2008, international regulators let China buy a 60-tonne ivory stockpile that can be legally traded.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 09:47:07 +0000
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