The Pros And Cons Of Ivory Trading

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Imagine you are at a store, walking around, looking for something to buy. You walk past the jewelry counter and can’t help but notice the pretty bracelet sitting in the glass case. It is white ivory with a beautiful red and gold design. You ask the lady to take it out of the case for you, and when you try it on it’s a perfect fit! But before you decide to buy this beautiful piece of jewelry, think about where it came from. This ivory bracelet you are holding in your hand most likely came from a poached elephant somewhere in the Middle East. Poaching has become a huge problem there, and buying this bracelet is supporting it. The ivory trade has caused elephants to become critically endangered, and if people keep buying items that were made with …show more content…

The World Wildlife Fund is an organization that helps to protect and preserve the endangered Sumatran elephants. One way they are helping is by sending ‘rangers’ to Indonesia to set up fences to keep the elephants out of the harm of villages and back into their habitats. In 2004, they established the Elephant Flying Squad, which is “made up of rangers, noise and light-making devices, a truck, and four trained elephants that would drive wild elephants back into the forests if they threatened to enter villages” (Elephant). In addition to physically moving the elephants away from villages and away from human contact, the WWF also did some research on the Sumatran elephants to find a way to make sure humans and elephants can coexist (Elephant). As the WWF has been helping to keep elephants away from the harm of people, they have also teamed up with TRAFFIC, the “international wildlife trade monitoring network, to reduce the major threat that illegal and illicit domestic ivory markets pose to wild elephants” (Elephant). TRAFFIC, in addition to reducing the ivory threat to elephants, pinpoints specific routes of ivory trades and stops them. This is very important to the Sumatran elephants because the ivory trade is one of the main issues that they deal with and with TRAFFIC trying to stop it, they may actually have a

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