Chapter 2: Chapter 568: Only Elephants Need Ivory
Lin Hao couldn't help but sigh!
He recalled a public service advertisement he once saw.
A mother elephant and her calf, walking ahead in the beautiful savannah against the sunset.
The calf happily said, "Mom, I have tusks now!"
"..."
"Mom, I have tusks, yay!"
The calf didn't receive congratulations from its mother, only silence, leaving it puzzled, "Mom, aren't you happy for me?"
Despite the years that have passed, he still has a profound memory of this public service advertisement.
The fact that elephants have evolved to not grow tusks to avoid being poached is heartbreakingly disheartening.
Moreover, elephants not having tusks not only complicates their own feeding and drinking but also affects other wildlife that depends on elephants.
This invisible impact, who knows how many years it will take to truly manifest.
Lin Hao continued to read, "Can tusks grow back if they fall out?"
The long tusks that protrude outward, which most people refer to, are actually the elephant's incisors! The ones inside the mouth are molars.
The segment that shows outside is not the whole; a third is embedded in the skull.
To obtain ivory, there are only two ways: wait for the elephant to die naturally or kill it.
Poachers, in their quest for complete tusks, are extremely brutal. After killing an elephant, they cut off its head and trunk to easily extract the tusks. Some elephants weren't even fully dead when their tusks were harvested.
Lin Hao imagined the horrifying sight of an elephant not yet dead, lying on the ground with a gruesome hole violently opened in its face, blood gushing out, its severed trunk casually thrown aside, as its tusks were removed, leaving only its massive body to rot slowly, with flies joyfully buzzing around the flesh.
Just the thought made him shiver, a nauseating feeling rising within him!
In the storage of the Kenya Wildlife Service once lay 132 tons of ivory, from 12,000 elephants, most killed by poachers, filling the storage with a bloody stench too unbearable to face directly.
One visitor remarked after their visit, "Entering, you're hit by the smell of decay, as if seeing piles of bones. Witnessing such a scene, you'd never want to buy ivory to decorate your home or wear it because it feels so cruel and ominous."
Previously, there wasn't authoritative data on elephant populations, but the consensus is that from the 1970s and 1980s, the number of African elephants plummeted from 1.3 million to less than 500,000, some reports even suggesting less than 400,000.
That's essentially about a hundred elephants dying each day.
Due to poaching and the ivory trade, elephant populations face the threat of extinction.
The next question is, should ivory be destroyed?
Some argue that since African countries have many stockpiled ivory, destroying it is wasteful. If ivory trade was legalized, providing a regulated channel for ivory sales, would it curb poaching? Moreover, could the profits from ivory sales be invested in elephant conservation?
However, the reality is harsh.
After opening legal trades for ivory, elephant poaching and black-market smuggling actually surged.
Legal trade spiked consumer demand for ivory. The mix of legal and illegal products also complicates law enforcement.
Thus, proposals for legal ivory trade never passed again, and countries have destroyed 300 tons of ivory stockpiles.
Embarrassingly, China was once the world's largest consumer of ivory, signifying wealth for the rich.
But China has also taken action.
The exhibit ends with, "From January 1, 2018, our country has completely halted the processing and sale of ivory and its products, thoroughly banning the ivory trade. Buying and selling ivory products is illegal.
Only elephants need, and have the right to, ivory!"
After reading the display, Lin Hao felt a surge of passion, especially by the last sentence, which was powerfully compelling; he almost wanted to shout it out loud.
A child nearby was also earnestly looking at the display!
A cartoon panel prepared for children used a conversation format to tell children to reject the ivory trade.
An adult says, "Ivory is a symbol of sophisticated taste," while a child responds, "I prefer them alive."
"It's not me who killed the elephants." "Even though you didn't kill them, buying ivory is the same as supporting slaughter!"
After finishing the ivory display, Lin Hao wandered around the Observatory Cabin.
He noticed a visitor looking at something behind a door, curious.
Is there an exhibit panel behind the door? Who would see it placed there?
He took a look after the person left.
There wasn't an exhibit panel, just a poem written in charcoal in crooked lines: "Journalists interview never see money, elephant disasters year after year. When will the imperial edict arrive, slaughtering elephants for a good New Year!"
Between the lines, there was a deep resentment toward elephants, oppressed by elephants to the point of suffocation, a helpless inability to live!
The resentment seemed to leap off the door.
Taken aback, Lin Hao felt as if struck by lightning out of a clear sky, or as if hit by a blunt force.
He instinctively looked at the panel next to it.
The ivory exhibit panel spoke of people's greedy craving for beautiful ivory leading to the cruel poaching of elephants, while this panel discussed the more complex human-elephant conflicts.
It started with stories about human-elephant conflicts.
In 2015, a family in Xishuangbanna was playing mahjong when suddenly, an elephant charged at their house, knocking it down and injuring all four people. Thankfully, someone saw the elephant coming and took the baby away in time.
Professor Zhang, an authority on elephant research, was conducting a project in Xishuangbanna's Wild Elephant Valley with his students. The landlady responsible for cooking for the students was trampled to death by a wild elephant on a rainy day while she was out.
From 1988 to 2016, over 28 years, elephants killed 68 people in areas like Xishuangbanna and Pu'er, injuring 320 due to elephants, with agricultural losses exceeding 30 billion yuan.
For the locals, elephants are undoubtedly a lingering threat. Fearing encountering elephants when leaving the house, worrying about their hard-grown crops being destroyed by elephants, leaving nothing to harvest. This poem was written by a local on their home's door during Professor Zhang's research in Pu'er.
Tragedies befell not just humans; during this period, 80 elephants were also killed by people.
In 2016, two young elephants passed through a village and died from eating crops sprayed with pesticides. The elephant herd lingered around the bodies of the young elephants for days, their cries echoing through the valley.
Elephants have a gestation period of 22 months, producing only one calf at a time with a five to six-year interval before another birth. Elephants highly cherish and care for their calves.
The death of the young elephants made the herd particularly irritable, showing hostility towards humans, causing significant panic in the area.
Another family's wife went out to the toilet and encountered an elephant entering their yard. Seeing it about to charge, the husband quickly came out, pointed a hunting rifle at the elephant, and fired. The shot hit a vulnerable spot behind the elephant's ear, killing it instantly.
The elephant was pregnant, and the herd was enraged. Fearing retaliation from the herd, the locals reported the incident and got arrested for illegal possession of firearms.
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