Ivory: Africa's White Gold

White Gold

When you think of white gold, you most likely imagine an expensive bracelet or ring made of opulent metal. However, the “white gold” of Africa is a different substance: ivory. Ivory is the white material that makes up the tusks of various animals, most notably elephants. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, ivory trade has been banned internationally since 1989. However, the illegal killing of African elephants for their tusks continues to persist nearly 30 years later and is still a major topic of debate in Africa and throughout the world.

To begin, it is important to know why ivory is in such high demand and who is the main buyer of illegal ivory in the global economy. An article by National Geographic explains that the bulk of ivory from poached elephants is smuggled into and sold in Asia. In Asia, ivory is in high demand for two reasons. The first reason is that traditional Chinese medicine often calls for ivory in its recipes; in the traditional Chinese culture, ivory is believed to be a powerful healing agent that can cure various diseases. Elephant ivory, along with the horns of rhinos, is sold in Asian countries as medicine in various forms, including pills and powders (World Wildlife Foundation). The other use for ivory that is popular in the Asian community is that it can be carved to form small figurines and is known to be made into beautiful art. These artworks made from ivory are worth a great deal of money and are considered a display of wealth. Ivory is in high demand in Asia and this causes the perpetuation of illegal poaching of African elephants.

When ivory is a hot commodity, as it has been for many years, the demand for more of it only increases. The ever-growing Asian market for ivory drives poachers to brutal acts of violence in order to collect the amount of ivory they want from elephants in Africa. One example of a major elephant slaughtering would be the Garamba National Park massacre last May. National Geographic cites the African Parks Network in stating that 33 elephant carcasses were discovered in a short period of time within this important national park. These elephants were killed and stripped of their tusks so that the ivory could be sold on the black market. National Geographic adds that 3 elephant poachers were killed by park rangers who were defending the elephants. Clearly there is a death toll both on the elephants and on humans hunting and guarding them. The constant need for ivory led poachers to slay elephants carelessly in an effort to make themselves richer.

Finally, even when elephants are not killed in massive groups, separate poachings add up to an enormous amount of killings throughout Africa. This death toll is so great that it is possible that elephants could become extinct in the near future. While the bulk of this issue is contained within central Africa, it is widespread because elephants have been forced into various sections of the country and have now lost 30% of their original territory (Plos One). According to PNAS, there was a 63.7% decline in the population of elephants between 2002 and 2012. Additionally, National Geographic reports that over 100,000 elephants were killed between 2010 and 2012; in only two years, an entire chunk of the population was wiped out.

To conclude, the huge demand for ivory in the Asian market is a major driving factor behind many brutal killings of elephants and despite the fact that their killing is illegal this violence persists. In Africa and Asia, the ivory from the tusks of elephants is the most precious substance of all; it truly is like white gold.

Works Cited

Christy, Bryan. "Poachers Slaughter Dozens of Elephants in Key African Park." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 13 May 2014. Web. 8 Mar. 2015. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140513-democratic-republic-congo-garamba-elephants-poaching-world/>. This article was possibly the most helpful to me in giving me a real grasp of the topic. It showed real life examples of the brutality of elephant poaching and slaughters and had no more bias than an informed opinion. This article proved invaluable to me in making a point in my own article.

"Devastating Decline of Forest Elephants in Central Africa." PLOS ONE. PLOS ONE, 4 Mar. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. <http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059469>. This article also provided useful information about elephants in Africa. This article was helpful because its information was solid and there were many statistics. Additionally, this research paper was unbiased and was therefore a good resource for this research paper.

"Illegal Killing for Ivory Drives Global Decline in African Elephants." PNAS. Ed. Peter M. Kareiva. PNAS, n.d. Web. This backed up the other informational article and gave more useful statistics. The good news about this source is that it was fairly unbiased because it was a simple statement of data from a research project done. This was mostly useful for information on numbers and facts but not on basic background information.

"Issues: Illegal Hunting and Trade." WWF. WWF, n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2015. <http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/asian_elephants/areas/issues/illegal_hunting_trade/>. This article was somewhat short but contained some valuable information. It helped me to get a good sense of the topic and it was useful in my actual article as well. Because of its source it had some bias, but it was more of an article with an informed opinion rather than a true persuasive piece.

Scriber, Brad. "100,000 Elephants Killed by Poachers in Just Three Years, Landmark Analysis Finds." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 18 Aug. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2015. This source was good because it contained very interesting statistics surrounding elephants and their poaching in Africa. It was useful in that it gave me good numbers to use in my article and I found it fascinating to read. It was also good background information.

"Threats to African Elephants." WWF. WWF, n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2015. <http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/elephants/african_elephants/afelephants_threats/>.This article gave me some more basic and background information. I found it useful because I was able to become more knowledgable on the topic and because it verified some information that I already knew was true.