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Friday, July 29, 2016

Day 400- Elephants and Election Day

August 5, 2015

New Jersey becomes the first state to ban the import or sale of ivory in the United States.  

August 12, 2015 

Governor Andrew Cuomo signs a new law to prevent the sale of ivory in New York State on World Elephant Day.  

October 4, 2015

California Governor Brown signs AB 96, named for the number of elephants killed every day in Africa, into law, "thus eliminating the third largest ivory market in the country and joining New York and New Jersey in banning intrastate ivory trade."

"Up to 90% of the ivory for sale in Los Angeles and approximately 80% of the ivory for sale in San Francisco is likely illegal under California law.  The proportion of likely illegal ivory in California has roughly doubled--from approximately 25% in 2006 to about 50% in 2014."

November 3, 2015

Washington State voters prohibit the sale, purchase and distribution of ten endangered species groups, including elephant ivory in a landslide vote. 

June 28, 2016

Hawaiian Governor Ige signs Senate Bill 2647 into law, banning the sale, purchase, barter and possession with intent to sell of any ivory products. 

July 7, 2016

Wildlife conservationists in Oregon submit signatures to get their ivory ban measure on the ballot in November.

July 28, 2015 

This November's Ballot will include Petition 68, banning the sale of ivory in Oregon.  


To our friends in Oregon, do not boo the sale of ivory.  Vote! 


Go make a difference! 

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Day 399- Ivory is the Ammunition

How Anti-Terrorism Tactics Are Being Used to Fight Elephant Poaching: In Kenya, Elephant poaching reached it's record high in 2012.  It is reported that 384 elephants were slaughtered.  Three years later, only 96 elephants were killed in 2015.  Lower poaching numbers aren't only great for the elephants- less poaching means less funding for terror groups, such as the Lord Resistance Army, led by the notorious Joseph Kony.  In fact, Feisal Ali Mohamed, an ivory poaching kingpin, was sentenced to 20 years in prison last Friday, guilty of dealing in ivory worth $433,000.  In a press statement, Kenya Wildlife Service said, "The guilty verdict is a strong message to all networks of poaching gangs, ivory smugglers, financiers, middlemen and shippers that Kenya will not watch as its elephant population is decimated or its territory used as a conduit for traffickers."
While the risk of extinction seems to constantly loom over African elephants, poaching devastates locally and globally. Over the past 28 years, Joseph Kony, one of Africa’s most notorious terrorists, has led the Lord’s Resistance Army in abducting more than 66,000 children for use as child soldiers, servants, and sex slaves.  Acts of cyclical violence against vulnerable children and the gentle giant Loxodonta Africana, fuel further brutality and instability in these fragile political regions and ecosystems.  Ivory tusks are worth up to $1,500 per pound on the black market; a male elephant typically has two 250-pound tusks.  Often the slaughter of one elephant can bring Kony and the LRA $750,000.  With about 35,000 elephants killed per year worldwide, and only 500,000 remaining in the wild, elephants are likely to be extinct by 2030 if poachers such as Kony are not stopped. 
In 1994, during the civil war between the North and the South in Sudan, Kony offered the Northern government his assistance in destabilizing the South.  In return, the government in Khartoum funded the LRA, supplying Kony and the soldiers with “food, medicine, and arms, including automatic rifles, antiaircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars."  However, in 2005, the peace agreement between the North and South ended Kony’s funding.  The LRA relocated to Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, surrounded by about 4,000 elephants at the time.  With the ivory demand high in Asia, Kony realized his new source of funding: the largest land mammal on Earth. 
In 2009, Kony’s men attacked the rangers protecting Garamba National Park, weakening antipoaching efforts.  Since then, a ranger unit has been permanently deployed to protect the new park headquarters, and more specifically, a radio tower that is being built for the rangers, one of the park’s most valuable assets.  The rangers’ resources are limited; using old and unreliable AK-47s, often seized from poachers, two airplanes, and a helicopter against the LRA, though their main setback is their lack of ammunition.  A Sudanese poaching expedition in 2015 wiped out nearly 400 of Garamba National Park’s elephants, and the LRA is responsible for another 2,100, leaving less than 1,500 elephants in the park.  The fight between Garamba’s 150 rangers and poachers such as the LRA is often described as war. 
Slaughtering elephants and ruling in terror fuels the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Kony is raiding villages and “forcing children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He mutilates those who stand in his way, or those simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, cutting off innocent civilians’ noses, lips, and hands. He abducts girls to be sex slaves for his officers,” creating an almost unstoppable terrorist army, fueled by elephants. Ivory is the ammunition killing humans and elephants.

Without awareness of the looming environmental catastrophe, or with malicious callousness of said devastation, elephant poaching by the Lord’s Resistance Army will continue until extinction of the species on the continent.  The criminal Kony, must be named an international terrorist and an enemy of peaceful governments everywhere.  Ending the cycle of arming terrorists begins with limiting the purchase of ivory.  Kony must not be allowed to use elephants as his source of ammunition, to save the lives of countless civilians currently being threatened by the Lord’s Resistance Army, as well as the elephants of Africa.

Sources: 


Go make a difference!