Today Kenyans united with thousands of people in over 120 cities across the world in raising awareness about the need to stop illegal trade in ivory wildlife products such as elephant tusks and rhino horns. Organized by WildlifeDirect,National Museums of Kenya among others the 10 km Global March for Elephants and Rhino was set to be the largest demonstration ever with an aim of publicizing and asking every government around the world to publicly destroy their stockpiles of illegal wildlife products and show zero tolerance for illegal trading.
According to the David Wildlife Trust a conservation charity based in Kenya, 36,000 African elephants were slaughtered last year to fuel the illicit ivory trade .It is estimated that one elephant is killed every 15 minutes. In June this year Satao , the largest elephant that ever lived was killed to supply the demand for Ivory. The poachers used poisoned arrows before they cut off his tusks, leaving his face so mutilated that it took Kenyan authorities two weeks to confirm his identity. Its sad to note that the growth of ivory trade has been fuelled mainly by the demand from the Asian market.
While much is being done on the ground including excellent and firm wildlife conservation bills in Kenya and other African countries to protect this precious animals there is need to raise awareness across the world to purchasers of ivory products who might not realize the wider implications of the decision they make.
Ivory belong to Elephants! Don?t buy Ivory during holidays as gifts etc .Every country across the world must join up in this fight to ban selling and buying of all forms of ivory .To me there is no legal ivory! Buying ivory only serves to fuel a trade which results in more senseless deaths of these beautiful animals. We can't let man-made extinction be the end of this iconic species."
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