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Elephants have been a part of our culture for thousands of years. Their size made them an ideal carrier for not only humans but their burdens.
Now that man continues his expansion the truly wild elephants do not have many places left on this earth. They have been delegated to circus animals and in the far east worked sometimes to the dropping point. A few individuals endeavor to give them a setting that their ancestors grew up in and to have them not as "pets" or "workers" but just as the wonderful animals they are and to cherish them from a distance.
Between 1979 and 1989, the worldwide demand for ivory caused elephant populations to decline to dangerously low levels. During this time period, poachings fueled by ivory sales cut Africa's elephant population in half. Since they were big targets and sported the largest tusks, savannah elephants took the worst hit. But as soon as these elephants began to vanish, hunters moved into the forests in search of the elephants' smaller kin. In 1977, 1.3 million elephants lived in Africa; by 1997, only 600,000 remained.
Recently, that number has stabilized, due in large part to the 1990 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) ban on international ivory sales.
But in June, 1997, CITES voted partially to lift trade sanctions and to allow Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to sell stockpiled ivory to Japan, where there is a major ivory market. Many conservation groups fear that this slight loosening of the ivory ban will rekindle poaching throughout the elephants' range.
In many regions of the world the elephants are protected by law, but people still kill these animals. People slaughter these animals for the ivory in their tusks. Also they are killed for their hide to sell as trinkets. Between the time 1980 to 1990 the elephant population in Africa dropped from 1.2 million to 625,00 indivuals. Sometime during this time preiod as many as 300 elephants were killed a day. In 1989 a convention was held to help the elephants. At the convetion they put the elephants on the endangered species list. Over 75 countries supported the elephants.
Poaching has devastating effects on the structure of elephant populations. Hunters often seek the oldest elephants to obtain the largest tusks, wiping out the mature members of the population. The pattern has profound implications on the reproductive capacity in elephant herds.
Male elephants generally do not mate until they are about 30 years old. With the slaughter of so many mature males, the rate of reproduction is quite low. Poaching has also been blamed for disrupting the stability of herds, which in turn impacts the ability of elephants to breed.
Elephants - Order Proboscidea - A listing of Elephant sites
