Elephants vanishing before our eyes

Even with a total ban on trade in ivory, the worldwide elephant population continues to plummet, with current estimates putting the African population at 470,000. There were more than 1 million African elephants when the ivory trade ban went into effect in 1989.

The illegal ivory trade is being carried out mostly by large crime syndicates, Wasser believes, and is being driven by growing markets in China and Japan, where ivory is in demand for carvings and signature stamps called hankos.

In addition, in the last few years demand has risen sharply in the United States, where much of the ivory is used to make knife handles and gun grips. In fact, a May report from the Care for the Wild International, a not-for-profit British natural protection organization, ranks the U.S. second behind China as a marketplace for illegal ivory.

But the illegal ivory trade has gotten relatively low priority from prosecutors, and new laws promoting global trade have created "a policing nightmare," Wasser says, which makes ivory poaching a high-profit, low-risk endeavor.

Again we see the ugly side of global trade rear its head. What caused this reversal?

At the time the treaty was enacted, poachers were killing an average of 70,000 elephants a year. The ban instigated much stronger enforcement efforts, nearly halting poaching almost immediately. However, that sense of success resulted in waning enforcement. Western aid was withdrawn four years after the ban was enacted and poaching gradually increased to the current alarming rates, Wasser said.

"The situation is worse than ever before and the public is unaware," he said, "It's very serious because elephants are an incredibly important species. They keep habitats open so other species that depend on such ecosystems can use them. Without elephants, there will be major habitat changes, with negative effects on the many species that depend on the lost habitat.

Elephants are glorious members of God's creation. Their behavior continues to amaze wildlife biologists, as elephants demonstrate behaviors that parallel our own to an extraordinary extent:

A wide variety of behaviours, including those associated with grief, making music, art, altruism, allomothering, play, use of tools,^[37] compassion and self-awareness ^[38] evidence a highly intelligent species on par with cetaceans^[5] and primates^[6].

Elephants deserve our most extraordinary protection, as do Africa's and India's big cats and other creatures that serve as expressions of God's amazing creative powers. These animals have much to teach us about the virtues God would have us live by. As the apostle Paul put it so beautifully:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. -- Rom. 1:20 (ESV)

Let us all strive to be conservationists, particularly of this most noble creature.