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WORLD ELEPHANT DAY ON 12 AUGUST |
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by Neha Swaminathan | 12-08-2014 02:17
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August 12 is World Elephant Day. The elephant is a mighty animal loved by everyone on earth but it also is the target of poachers for its ivory. According to Jason Bell, Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) Elephant Programme, at least 35,000 elephants a year die the most cruel of deaths to supply the ivory business. Most of these elephants are from Africa. Poverty and political insecurity are the major reasons for the thriving illegal poaching.
Thankfully the UAE is not a major destination country for the ivory trade, but it is still used as a transit port for the illegal trade. Authorities at Dubai International Airport announced that they seized 1,500 ivory products and tusks in the last three years. Ivory is smuggled from Africa to Asia, and the two main destination countries are China and Thailand.
Dubai Police, Dubai Airports Authority, the Ministry of Environment and Water and IFAW had conducted a 20-day campaign in June at Dubai Airports to bring awareness on the illegality of carrying ivory. IFAW, in collaboration with the UAE's Ministry of Education, had launched "Elephants Never Forget" in 2011 and "Big Trunks Tiny Tales" in 2012 to raise awareness on elephant conservation.
IFAW advises countries to cooperate with agencies such as Interpol and interact with the authorities to map and profile those behind the criminal activity. For our part let us spread awareness to say a "Big No" to any product of ivory an save the "Big friends" each one of us admire irrespective of age. |
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7 Comments
I am glad to know that UAE does not encourage this & they come hard on such malpractices.
Posted 14-08-2014 21:11
Ivory trade in particular & all animal products must be banned. We also individually should shun the use of the same.
Posted 14-08-2014 20:52
Thank you for sharing this, Neha. As Israel mentioned in his latest article, Elephants are the representative species when we refer to poaching due to its beautiful teeth. I can never agree killing animal just to cater human's want for beautiful jewels.
Posted 13-08-2014 09:34
I hope elephants will be able to settle down.
In order to do that, we must strongly act against elephant hunting or other habitat-destruction issues...
Posted 12-08-2014 22:41
Kudos to UAE and hopefully the statistics will fall rapidly.
Monitoring and punishing buyers should decrease the supply...
Posted 12-08-2014 13:34
Environment work in UAE is really inspiring.. Thanks for sharing.. :)
Posted 12-08-2014 12:38
Thanks for sharing the sad statistics and an important concern. It is very sad that such massive number of elephants are being killed for materialistic pleasures like ivory etc . Glad to know that despite not being the direct destination for ivory trade , UAE is still monitoring it very tightly & working hard to spread awareness .
Posted 12-08-2014 03:38