Lin Hao couldn't help sighing!
Think of a public service advertisement I once saw.
A female elephant and a baby elephant walked forward on the beautiful grassland facing the sunset.
The little elephant said happily: "Mom, I have teeth!"
"..."
"Mom, I have teeth!"
The little elephant couldn't wait for mother's congratulations, and some were just silent, and asked in doubt: "Mom, aren't you happy for me?"
Although in the past many years, I still have a deep impression on this public service advertisement.
Elephants choose not to grow teeth in order not to be poached, which is sad and melancholy.
Moreover, elephants do not grow tusks, which is not only the inconvenience of water and food, but also affects other creatures that depend on elephants for survival.
This intangible influence does not know how long it will take to truly manifest.
Lin Hao continued to look down: "If the ivory is lost, can it grow back?"
Generally speaking, the two long tusks exposed outside actually refer to the front teeth of an elephant! In the mouth are molars.
The outside section is not all, one third is wrapped in the skull.
There are only two ways to get ivory, one is to wait for the elephant to die naturally, and the other is to kill the elephant.
In order to obtain the complete ivory, the poachers use extremely cruel methods. After hunting the elephant, the head and nose are cut off so that the ivory can be taken out. When some elephants were harvested for ivory, they hadn't even completely died.
Lin Hao thought of the unbroken elephant lying on the ground. His face was cruelly cut into an ugly big hole. The blood was constantly lying out. The nose was cut off and thrown on the ground. The tusks were taken out, leaving only the huge body gradually. Rotting, flies dance happily among flesh and blood.
Just thinking about it, I couldn't help but shudder, and a nauseous feeling rose in my heart!
The warehouse of the Kenya Wildlife Conservation Agency once stored 132 tons of ivory, from 12,000 elephants, most of which were killed by poachers. The smell of blood is permeated in the warehouse, which makes people can't bear to look directly at it.
Someone sighed with emotion after visiting: "When you enter the door and smell the pungent corpse odor, as if you see the tired bones, you will never want to buy the ivory back at home and put it on your body. Because you will think it is so cruel and ominous."
There was no authoritative statistical data on the number of elephants before, but the consensus view is that in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of African elephants dropped sharply from 1.3 million to less than 500,000, and there were even reports that it was less than 40. ten thousand.
This is equivalent to almost a hundred elephants die every day.
The elephant population is in danger of extinction due to poaching and the ivory trade.
The next question is, will the ivory be destroyed?
There is a thought that African countries have a lot of ivory stocks, and destroying it is a waste. If the ivory trade is legalized and there are formal channels for selling ivory, will it be possible to combat poaching? The money from the sale of ivory can also be invested in the cause of protecting elephants.
However, ideals are beautiful, and reality is cruel.
After the legal trade in ivory was liberalized, elephant poaching and black market smuggling increased substantially.
Legal trade has stimulated consumer demand for ivory, and the mixture of legal and illegal has also created difficulties for law enforcement.
Therefore, the legal ivory trade case was never passed, and countries around the world have destroyed 300 tons of ivory stocks.
It is embarrassing that China is the world's largest consumer of ivory, and ivory has become a status symbol for the rich.
But China is also acting.
At the end of the exhibition board, it read: "From January 1, 2018, my country has completely stopped the processing and sales of ivory and products, and has completely banned the ivory trade. It is illegal to buy and sell ivory products.
Only elephants need it and have the right to have ivory! "
Lin Hao was full of enthusiasm after watching the exhibition sign, especially the last sentence, sonorous and powerful, he couldn't wait to shout a word along with him.
The children next to you are also looking at the signage seriously!
What the lower place prepares for the children is a cartoon exhibition board, in the form of character dialogue, telling the children to reject the ivory trade.
An adult said "ivory is a symbol of elegance", and a child said "I prefer them to live".
"I didn't kill the elephant. Although you didn't kill it, buying ivory is equivalent to supporting the killing!"
After reading the ivory sign, Lin Hao wandered in the observation hut again.
Seeing a tourist, he didn't know what to look at behind the door, and was a little curious.
Is there a sign behind the door? Who can see it behind?
When someone left, I went over and took a look.
There was no sign on it, so I wrote a limerick in black charcoal crookedly: "The reporter can't see the money in the interview, and the elephants are plagued year after year. When will the imperial decree arrive, the elephants will be slaughtered for the New Year!"
Between the lines, there is a strong hatred for the elephant, and the helplessness of being pressured by the elephant and unable to live!
This hatred is about to pop out of the door.
Lin Hao was caught off guard, like a thunderbolt in the clear sky, and a sap on someone else.
Subconsciously looked at a sign next to him.
The ivory exhibit just now talked about the cruel elephant poaching caused by the greedy people's desire for beautiful ivory, while this exhibit talked about more complex human-elephant conflicts.
First, I told some stories about conflicts between humans and elephants.
In 15 years, the family in Xishuangbanna was playing mahjong. The baby was placed next to him. Suddenly an elephant rushed to their house and overwhelmed the house. All four of them were injured. Fortunately, someone saw the elephant coming and took the baby away, otherwise they still don't know what to do.
Professor Zhang, an authority on elephant research, took the students to work in the Wild Elephant Valley in Xishuangbanna. During the project, a proprietress was in charge of cooking for the students. On a rainy day, the proprietress went out and encountered wild elephants and was trampled to death by the elephants.
Between 1988 and 2016, 68 people were trampled to death by elephants in Xishuangbanna, Pu'er and other places, 320 people were injured by elephants, and agricultural losses exceeded 30 billion yuan.
For fellow villagers, elephants are undoubtedly a hidden danger in life. Going out is afraid of encountering elephants, and afraid that the crops they have grown so hard will be ruined by the elephants. This poem was written on Chaimen of a fellow villager when Professor Zhang was investigating in Pu'er.
It is not only human beings that are tragic, but 80 elephants were also killed during this period.
In 16 years, two baby elephants passed by the village and died by accidentally eating crops that had been sprayed with pesticides. The elephant herd wandered in front of the corpses of the two baby elephants for several days.
The gestation period of elephants lasts as long as 22 months, and each litter can only give birth to one, and it can regenerate after an interval of five or six years. Elephant herds are extremely rare for baby elephants.
The death of the baby elephant made the elephant herd extremely irritable, and it was full of hostility towards humans for a period of time, creating a lot of panic in the local area.
There is also a family whose daughter-in-law came out to go to the bathroom and ran into an elephant into the yard. Seeing that he was about to rush past, the man hurried out and shot the elephant with his shotgun. This shot hit the fragile place behind the female elephant's ears and killed it directly.
The mother elephant is still pregnant, and the elephant herd is going to die of anger. Fearing revenge by the elephants, the fellow had to report the crime and was arrested for illegally possessing guns.