Hunted and killed for their ivory tusks daily in Africa and in China, the elephant population is diminishing. Although poaching elephants is illegal in both countries, about 22,000 elephants were killed in 2012 alone. The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) vice president of the African program, Richard Carroll, admits that if elephants are eliminated, the forest itself will eventually die. “They really create habitat for other wildlife in the ecosystems and they are extremely important, the whole ecosystem has evolved around them”explained Carroll.

            Trying to reduce the act of elephant poaching, a global ban was set into action in 1990 and governments have enforced penalties for illegally killing elephants and trading their tusks. Before the ban, “…Over 80% of all the raw ivory trade came from poached elephants”says WWF. Consumers in China see ivory as a status symbol, so the highest demand comes from them. A single pound of ivory sells for as little as $1,000 in the streets of Beijing. But why is ivory such a big symbol of status when the only way you can get such a big amount of it is by killing the last largest living mammal in the world? Elephants do not deserve to go extinct due to poaching.

            From 2011 to 2012 elephant poaching dropped from 25,000 to 22,000.  But unfortunately for the elephants, in only two years 47,000 of the remaining 500,000 elephants were killed. On the up side, there has been somewhat of a decrease. Elephant poaching could dramatically decrease if only the governments that are under-funded in wildlife management could get help with funding. The step to ban elephant poaching globally did wonders for the innocent elephants. An estimated 100,000 elephants were being poached for their tusks yearly before the ban. 22,000 is a way better number but still, every elephant that is being poached is one too many.

            The only ones who can make the final call of if we will help save the elephants or not is the highest power of these countries. Raising awareness will help somewhat but if we fight for the elephants the governments of those countries will respond more. We know that there has been attempts to stop elephant poaching, but illegally it has continued and only decreased by a little bit.

            The seriousness of elephant poaching is highly underestimated. Shooting down helpless mothers and babies is disgusting and cruel. Poaching needs to stop. Further efforts would greatly help conserve the elephant population but without these efforts, I do not see elephants being around for many more years. Elephant poaching is very out of control and needs to be stopped as soon as possible.