U.S. Crushes 6 Tons of Seized Ivory to Save Elephants
The U.S. government destroyed nearly six tons of ivory by crushing the products into tiny pieces. This symbolic event aimed to bring attention to the corruption and illegal activity surrounding the killing of elephants for the ivory trade.
Originally published November 15, 2013
Transcript
BRYAN CHRISTY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING WRITER:
35,000 elephants were killed last year. This question is how impactful will an event like this be? And it is symbolically very significant, and people ought to take heart that this is happening. It's the U.S. taking a leadership position and what they are calling a first step regulating for eliminating the U.S. trade in ivory.
DAN ASHE, DIRECTOR, U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE:
The main point of this crush is to send a signal to the world, to raise awareness about a crisis--and international crisis--in illegal wildlife trafficking. We have to reduce the demand. We have to reverse that trend. We have to send the signal that ivory belongs elephants. It belongs to elephants in the wild.
BRYAN CHRISTY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING WRITER:
This is a criminal problem. I mean, everybody talks about wildlife crime. They are not talking about elephant conservation here so much as crime. We need to identify not just poachers on the ground but the organizer of those poachers. Who are the aggregators? Ivory is very difficult to move across borders. It weighs tons. To be able to move that, you have to a power player and you have to have government connections.
PAULA KAHUMBU, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EMERGING EXPLORER:
And it is easy to feel really despondent. We are witnessing a massacre of elephants of unprecedented proportions. And may people think it is just too late. The problem is just too big. The demand is too enormous.
Coming here to Colorado to see the crush is incredibly moving and inspiring for me. What I see is people on the other side of the planet joining Africa in a cause to save a species that only exist in the wild in Africa.
BRYAN CHRISTY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING WRITER:
The Philippines earlier this year crushed five tons of ivory. It's a very brave thing for them to do. We saw Gabon in West Africa destroy its ivory last year. Here, I think people in the U.S. government are hoping that first European countries may follow suit, that other countries will say, "We'll destroy our ivory stocks." But more, it's a first step to maybe more strongly regulating and banning the trade of ivory within the U.S. borders. And that sort of principle, laying that sort of groundwork, everyone hopes will be heard by China.
