Today, across the planet from where I am, in Kenya, a giant bonfire is underway. Twelve funeral pyres were set alight, 11 piled with 105 tons of elephant tusks and another with 1.35 tons of rhino horns, all intercepted from illegal poaching of 8000 elephants and more than 300 rhinos.
Trade in ivory from African elephants has been illegal since 1989 but that hasn’t stopped it and in recent years there has been an alarming increase in poaching. In 1979 there were an estimated 1.3 million African elephants, today that number is around 400,000.
Before the burning, the Kenya Wildlife Service partnered with UK based Stop Ivory organization to inventory and test all the material, recording DNA evidence for research purposes and for evidence in pending court cases as well as to provide some transparency in the process – presumably to show that officials weren’t shall we say, selling the stuff through the back door.
AP
I have something to say. When I was in my early 20’s someone gave me a pair of rings. One was made of a woven black elephant hair tied with gold and the other was carved of elephant ivory. I didn’t realize what it was at the time – thank goodness for age to take away the stupidness (?) of youth – but I’ve been aware of it burning a hole through my jewelry box for many years now. It seems that elephant tusks do not burn easily. The Kenyans piled the tusks on dried sandalwood and confiscated exotic animal skins and doused the whole lot in kerosene. Even so it will be burning for days. I don’t know how this garden of mine and surroundings would take to a kerosene burn of my old ring, but I have to figure something out. Some kind of gesture.
Which of course is what this well-publicized bonfire is. The Kenyan government sends a message – it is not acceptable to slaughter elephants for the ivory trade. Will it have a practical effect? 35,000 African elephants are killed a year – their ivory sells for up to $1000 a pound, a rhino horn goes for $30,000 a pound. Most illegal ivory (70%) is sold in China.
Also in the news this past weekend – Barnum and Bailey’s circus had its last elephant show, after announcing plans to retire all its elephants. After many years of turning away from protests of its practices, the company finally caved and the elephants are off to a retirement in Florida (although the practices of the company’s ‘elephant sanctuary’ also has its critics).
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
So – Barnum and Bailey – well done. Now how about those tigers and lions?
All this talk of elephants, at the same time I’m looking at images of Asian travels, brings back so many memories. I rode elephants many times in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia with just about everyone I traveled with. Everyone sports huge grins in those photos. Images of elephants in the art of these countries are everywhere – sculpture, carving, painting. The historical name of the (former) Kingdom of Laos is The Land of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol, although as in Africa, there are nowhere close to those numbers left. I remember the huge thrill of, while cruising down the Mekong on a boat, rounding the bend to see three working elephants (logging) on a break, cooling off in the water. And the somewhat chilling sight of the elephant sculptures outside the Foreign Correspondents Club in Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) fashioned from old weapons – recycling these artifacts of war are all over Laos and Cambodia.
Near Luang Prabang in Laos is the Elephant Village Sanctuary where I visited several times and rode the elephants. The elephants were all rescued from working lives in the logging industry. They each had a history and scars of all kinds (physical and mental) from their tough working lives. Some were blind from logging accidents, some had been mistreated and drugged to get longer work hours from them. The animals are valuable as work animals, but when they can’t work anymore they are then just a cost drain and even more at risk. They’re expensive to feed. The Sanctuary rescues the elephants, takes care of them and then puts them to work to earn their keep by strolling around the property with tourists on their backs. The Sanctuary also rents out cabins by the river and takes donations to support the work. When I was there you could sponsor an elephant rescue for $10,000. I was tempted.
