It is unfortunately true, that over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a dramatic resurgence in the poaching of elephants for their ivory. Given the huge recovery as they had made over the previous several decades thankfully this does not threaten their future survival in plenty of locations they’re found (this contrasted with the rhino poaching which can amount to to 10% of the population in the bad years in places like the Kruger national park).
However in some parts of the elephants range poaching is threatening their their continual survival. The African Savanna elephant has thankfully done relatively well in recent decades increasing in many of its ranges. The poaching over the last 10-years though has devastated some populations that had been slowly recovering such as as the elephants in the selous a 54,000 square km game reserve in Tanzania – small numbers of elephants are killed here legally each year, but tens of thousands have also Ben killed illegally. The Selous once had over 100000 elephants, now the most accurate estimate would suggest only a little over 15000 remain, a fall of the hats 50% in the last half a century.
Another separate species (only recognised as its own species in 2001) is the African forest elephant. thought to be as genetically separate from the savanna elephant cousins as lions and tigers. It is thought that African forest elephants are closer related to mamoths than they are to African Savanna elephant. Unfortunately as the protection for Savannah elephants increased poachers turned to forest elephants, and it is thought in the last 10 years, forest elephants have halved in number (and locally extinct in parts of their range).
Now quite apart from the horror of losing another incredible species in Africa, forest elephants are ecosystem engineers. They have a habit pushing down trees allowing lights to filter down to the floor from the canopy, as well as the spacing seeds in their dung with a nice helping of fertilizer. Without this seed dispersal the renewal of the forest can start to be far less efficient.Â
Why is this? Many trees in the African rainforest have evolved over long periods of time to have their seeds spread by elephants,they are often there for very very large and unlikely to be eaten by many smaller species. Now why does this matter? There are many parasitic insects within the the rainforest. Generally there is a parasitic insect speciflying on virtually every kind of tree. If large mammals are no longer present to carry seeds long distances before depositing them with fertilizer, they can only sprout in the shadow of their parent tree. However this is where the parasites come in; if you get several of the same species of tree in close proximity, the parasitic insect does so well in that area that they can damage the survival of the tree. This is why in the rainforest you do not get monocrop areas where only one tree grows.Often when scientist count species within an acre they can get above 500, an astounding thing given the number of tree species in the UK is only 32.
So; clearly live numbers of elephants are being killed for their tusks. Why would people do this? Many of the people surrounding national parks and nature reserves in Africa are poor, elephant tusks might be the equivalent of several years salary. However generally people have lived alongside wildlife and the majority of poaching is done by gangs not individual local people trying to survive. And what gives these gangs the incentive to hunt? It is the ability for them to make a lot of money from the activity which means that they have to be able to sell the ivory.
EBay and other online marketplaces is allowing ivory to be sold through there platform. They have blood on their hands and must be stopped from profiting from this. The first time I searched for ox bone on the eBay site, it was after a TV documentary that talked about how ivory is sold under the title ox bone. Given the publicity the documentary gave to this problem, I was astounded to go onto eBay after it’s broadcast and find hundreds of articles listed as ox bone that were clearly ivory.
Currently, eBay says it is far too time-intensive for them to go through their own products and check that they are what they say they are. If you report an item, they will take it down. This simply isn’t good enough-at the moment I’m writing this article eBay has a list of 242 items being sold as ox bone. It is true that items can be carved from ox bone, however these look significantly different. It is unacceptable that eBay only takes action when it’s uses point out an illegal item is being sold. If you search for something such as heroin on the site, while you find various items of clothing, you’ll find none of the drug heroin.
Clearly on this,the penalty to eBay for selling hard drugs is too high and they actually bothered to check. This must become the same thing for eBay when selling parts of endangered animals such as elephants.
I have not in the past asked anything from my readers but they read what I put up, however there is certain strength in large numbers of people doing things. At the moment as much as 5000 people read most of these articles. If even 10% of you in the next month searched for ox bone on eBay, and then wrote to complain about the fact that ivory is clearly being sold illegally on the eBay site-this would likely be a big enough number of messages for the site to consider changing its policy and taking its responsibilities more seriously.
Generally businesses do not like to be seen as damaging anything. I do not think it will help eBay to be seen as giving the monetary reasoning for the extinction of the remaining elephant species of the world, and with enough pressure I believe they could do something about this. I realise that with the number of Ox bone products being put on eBay, it would likely take a significant portion of an employees time. We the public, must make it too expensive va for eBay to not act.
It is a big enough loophole that ivory sellers have to do do is to claim the ivory predates 1940 ban; this itself needs to be reformed as this loophole is used to sell much of the ivory that is currently coming into the market.
Please spread news of this problem, and write to eBay, between us we can close off this avenue for illegal blood ivory to make it to market. Certainly, highlight items they are selling illegally, but challenge their laid-back attitude towards dealing with it. It is unacceptable for such a large multinational company to leave policing of its site to its users, rather than employing people to do it.