World Governments now stepping up conservation efforts

 

By Anthony Hines

 

At a meeting in Honolulu Hawaii, there was a World Conservation Congress to talk about what could be done to stop elephant poaching. While at the meeting, the world governments came up with the best way to deal with the issue of elephant poaching.

 

After a debate between 2 opposing sides, it was finally decided that the ivory markets would be shut down. Japan and Namibia were 2 of the countries against closing ivory markets, however in the end, the motion was adopted. Deputy chief program officer of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Andrew Wetzler had said, “Today’s vote by IUCN members is the first time that a major international body has called on every country in the world to close its legal markets for elephant ivory” What this comes down to, is that anything made with ivory that is sold legally, is now banned from being in stores. This decreases the price of ivory by a lot, now that the only way to purchase it, is illegally. This puts poaching elephants much more in the negative, with less returns, the hope is that poachers will turn away from taking the tusks of the elephants.

 

Andrew Wetzler continued on with his statement, “It’s truly a landmark moment, a victory for elephants that will hopefully be repeated later this month at the next meeting of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Johannesburg.”

United States and China, the largest consumers of ivory, have already put an almost complete ban on ivory markets. This is truly a monumental moment in wildlife conservation history.