The Plight of Elephants

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University of Florida *

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Anthropology

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Oct 30, 2023

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The Plight of Elephants This essay comes partly from an article that was in the Guardian, that was published on August 12, 2016, and a more recent piece on the Huffington Post web site posted on June 9, 2017. The guardian article gives a great overview of the current situation that elephants are facing in both Africa and in Asia. There are two species: African Elephants and Asian Elephants. African Elephants are larger than Asian Elephants and tusks are found typically in both sexes, whereas Asian elephant females lack tusks although some females have structures that are called ‘tushes’, which, are structurally different from true tusks: they are shorter they are not the same thing. Both species have been targets for poachers. The main goal has historically been ivory form the tusks but the recent Huffington Post piece notes that Asian elephants, at least in Myanmar, are now being targeted for their skins as well. This means that poachers are no longer limit themselves to killing males (bulls) but now they are also going females (cows) and even babies (calves). According to the Guardian article, it claims the total African Elephant population currently numbers at just under 500,000 individuals, whereas Asian Elephant numbers are only about 50,000 individuals, half of which these occur in India. We mostly hear about poaching and African Elephants. That’s because a lot of Asian Elephants occur in places that are war torn or off limits. Anyway CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) banned international trade of elephant ivory in 1989. Today they run a program called MIKE (Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants) and in various regions that calculate the PIKE (Proportion of Illegally Killed Elephants). PIKE is determined by categorizing the proportion of carcasses found that can be attributed to poaching.

Poaching continued and some nations built up stockpiles of confiscated ivory and debates raged as to whether or not they should be allowed to have one-off sales to generate revenue for conservation, or simply burn the stockpile. The Guardian piece claims that in 1800 there could have been as many as 26 million African Elephants. In the 1970s and 1980s, British Zoologist Ian Douglas Hamilton flew transects over sub-Saharan Africa and counted elephants. He discovered what was latyer called the ‘elephant holocaust”: referring to the decline in the 1980s of surviving African elephants from a high of 1 million to just 400,000. Well, Asian Elephants have also suffered. They once ranged from the coast of modern day Iran across southern Asia into China. The Huffington Post article emphasizes harvesting or poaching for elephant skin focuses on Asian Elephants in Myanmar (Burma), which has the second largest population of Asian Elephants, behind India, at about 1500 individuals. Rohit Singh, of the WWF stated that 20 dead and skinned Asian Elephants were found in one region of Myanmar between January and June of 2017. That was more dead elephants in just five months than in all of 2016. The surge in demand for elephant skin apparently comes from a fad in which people have been led to believe that elephant skin can cure eczema and even pimples and other skin maladies. Singh said that he did not think the demand reflected a basis in tradition as he was not familiar with that. The skins is sold in small pieces of a few square inches for a few dollars. One vendor in Myanmar claimed that the treatment involves burning the skin in a clay pot and then mixing the ashes with coconut oil and applying it to the affected area. The jury is still out as to whether or not this actually works, but unfortunately there may not be any elephants keft by the time they figure out it doesn't work, or that they can find a synthetic alternative.

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