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Elephants on the Edge
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10903 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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5 / 1993 |
2,806 Words |
| Author
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Ronald Orenstein
Ronald Orenstein is project director for the International
Wildlife Coalition and a member of the board of the Elephant
Research Foundation. He is the editor of Elephants: The
Deciding Decade (Sierra Club Books, 1991). |
THE FATE OF THE ELEPHANT
Douglas H.Chadwick
San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992
492 pp., $25.00
BATTLE FOR THE ELEPHANTS
Lain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton
New York: Doubleday, 1992
368 pp., $22.95
THE EYE OF THE ELEPHANT
An Epic Adventure in the Africa Wilderness
Delia and Mark Owens
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992
305 pp., $21.00
The past year has been a bumper one for books about elephants. Not just books, there has been a flood of newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television interviews, and filmed documentaries about the fate of these noble and much-loved animals. This may seem surprising to some; after all, wasn't all trade in ivory banned in 1989? Isn't the elephant safe?
The answer to the first question is yes. After a decade of failed attempts to control ivory poaching and smuggling while allowing legal trade to continue, international trade in ivory, or any other elephant product, was banned in 1989. In October of that year, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an international treaty that seeks to regulate the huge international wildlife trade, placed the African elephant on its Appendix I, which bars trade for "primarily commercial purposes." It joined its cousin the Asian elephant, which had been on Appendix I since 1977.
The answer to the second question, unfortunately, is no, for two reasons. First, and in the long run foremost, because the success or failure of the ivory ban has no bearing on the problems of unchecked deforestation, rampant population growth, and environmental decay that threaten to overwhelm Africa, its wildlife, and its people. The elephant will not survive that, if nothing is done about it, any more than will any other large animal in Africa--domestic cattle possibly excepted. Second, because the ivory ban itself may not hold out against an onslaught of propaganda attacking both it and the people and governments who support it.
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