Day 366- The Facts

Photograph by Beverly Joubert

"Tanzania’s elephant population declined from an estimated 109,000 elephants in 2009 to around 70,000 in 2012, according to the Tanzania Elephant Protection Society. Around 30 elephants are killed for their ivory every day, almost 11,000 each year."

This is a portion of an article Sarah Morrison wrote for The Independent yesterday.  I found these facts absolutely horrifying!  I can't believe that so many elephants are killed per day in Tanzania alone!  

Photograph by Tim Laman

"More than 100,000 Asian elephants may have existed at the start of the 20th century. The population is estimated to have fallen by at least 50% over the last 60-75 years."

World Wildlife Fund has never let me down!  These facts trouble me too, however.  There is somewhere between 25,600 and 32,750 Asian elephants left, also according to WWF.  

"Only when the last of the animals horns', tusks, skins and bones are sold, will mankind realize that money can never buy back our wildlife."

The author of this quote is unknown, and this is a altered version of an old Native saying, but when I came across it, it immediately caught my eye.  As  Joni Mitchell and many others have said, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Not only is it unfair to our wildlife that animals are being killed for human greed, but it will also be unfair to our grandchildren, their grandchildren, and theirs.  At the rate we're going, elephants are going to be completely wiped out in 2025.  That's only TEN years away!  Poaching NEEDS to stop! 

Go make a difference!