Save Wildlife

Efforts to save wildlife are working. There is a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). A major circus closed rather than continue subjecting elephants and tigers to punishing animal act training methods. Some dolphins and whales have retired. Underpasses let wildlife run under railroads in African nature preserves, and plantation owners are pressured to set aside "no go zones" and wildlife corridors to protect wildlife.

     But finding a shipping container with at least 14,000 pounds of elephant ivory tusks hidden under frozen fish in Hong Kong this July shows much more needs to be done. Arrests, fines, and prison sentences need to be imposed on wildlife killers and greedy poachers, smugglers, and traffickers. Loopholes that allow countries to operate domestic ivory markets and permit imports of "worked" ivory, i.e. carved canes, chess sets, jewelry, and statues, to allow reworked and repaired ivory to slip through need to be eliminated.

     Students interested in protecting endangered species can begin now to look for career opportunities in a wide variety of organizations:

• Traffic (traffic.org), a joint program of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Union
• World Wildlife Fund (worldwildlife.org)
• National Geographic (nationalgeographic.com)
• On the internet, look for organizations devoted to protecting: elephants, tigers, dolphins, whales, guerrillas, chimpanzees, orangutans.

       

Why the Circus Ran Away

I was a tourist walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City some 35 years ago, when the circus was in town. A woman handed me a flyer asking me to protest the way elephant acts were treated. When I was asked to make a prediction about any subject 25 years later, I said animal acts in circuses would no longer exist. At the end of May this year, the entire Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus will close.

By searching "elephants," you can read again the posts I wrote several years ago after I was exposed to the normal behavior of families of elephants in Africa, the cruel methods that cause elephants to perform for us out of fear, and the injuries to legs elephants suffer from riding in rail cars chained to cement floors.

It also is encouraging to see a decreased demand for raw ivory, often obtained from poached and killed elephants, has caused the price for a couple of pounds to drop to $740 in 2017 compared to a little over $2000 three years ago.

     

Talk with the Animals (Update)

Back in August, 2012, a section in my blog post, "Talk with the Animals," was titled, Spotlighting special concerns. It raised questions about the cruel treatment of animal performers in circuses.

     In March, 2015, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced the performances of Tonka, Luna, and other elephants would be phased out in three years, by 2018. In January, 2016, the date for pulling elephants off the road and sending them to a sanctuary was updated to schedule their departure for May, 2016.

     Although baby elephants are known to stay with their mothers for up to 16 years in the wild, in captivity, baby elephants are separated from their protesting mothers at birth. During their circus training to perform tricks, they are subjected to beatings with bullhooks (sharp weapons that resemble fireplace pokers) and can fall off pedestals, break their young growing legs, and have to be euthanized. Circus elephants also suffer from tuberculosis and arthritis. In the wild they can roam 30 miles a day, but when they travel with a circus, they are shackled in boxcars.

      Can nonhuman animals, such as elephants, chimpanzees, great apes, whales, and dolphins that are "sufficiently intelligent," be considered property and held captive legally? New York's Supreme Court will have a hearing on this question May 6, 2015.

    For more about how animals in circuses and zoos and endangered and exotic species are protected and treated, see the entire blog post, "Talk with the Animals."