Please Don't ever buy Ivory, save an elephant. If you travel to exotic places never buy anything that is or looks like it is made of ivory.
Countless elephants are murdered for the sake of ivory.

Another sad fact is that elephants in circuses are repeatedly beaten in order to train them. These intelligent social mammals often live their whole lives in travel trailers, sometimes in the blazing heat or the freezing cold. The majority of the time, they are chained by two feet, unable to take even one step forward or back. I have no idea what the solution is to this cruel human behaviour.




Some interesting facts about elephants from:
http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/about_elephants.htm

Elephant trunks can get very heavy. It is not uncommon to see elephants resting them over a tusk!
Elephants cry, play, have incredible memories, and laugh!
Elephants are sensitive fellow animals where if a baby complains, the entire family will rumble and go over to touch and caress it.
Elephants have greeting ceremonies when a friend that has been away for some time returns to the group.
Elephants grieve at a loss of a stillborn baby, a family member, and in many cases other elephants.
Elephants don't drink with their trunks, but use them as "tools" to drink with. This is accomplished by filling the trunk with water and then using it as a hose to pour it into the elephant's mouth.
Interestingly, the Asian elephant is more closely related to the extinct mammoth than to the African elephant (see evolution).

Thank you for this post Sue.
I love elephants and feel very upset what is being done to them. They are very intelligent and sensitive animals.

Love,
Vicky

Thank you for the post Sue.

It is very depressing how humans treat the animals in this world.

Due to the enormous size and strength of both African and Asian elephants, it is a fact that most trainers rely on chains and fear to make them obey. Typically the process starts with an elephant being beaten into submission at a very young age. Sadly, some elephants will spend a great deal of their lives in chains. The well-known Dumbo lived 20 years in "martingales," chains that ran from his tusks to his feet. In the wild, the life expectancy of elephants is generally the same as that of humans. In the circus, many elephants die prematurely from disease and the stress of confinement, for what?

http://elephant.elehost.com/News/General_News/About_Cir...s/about_circuses.htm

Love, Inda



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Elephants are some of my favourite animals.
It is nice to know that there are some retreats on Earth where the injured animals are well taken care of.

Thank you girls for your input.

There is some good news, and I saw a documentary on TV about this:
The Elephant Sanctuary of Hohenwald, Tennessee is a natural-habitat refuge where sick, old and needy elephants can once again walk the Earth in peace.

It makes me sick to see how mean and cruel people can be to animals in general and elephants in particular. I have seen once a documentary and couldn't bear the atrocious visions.

To hear that even in the circus trainers beat them to obey, is awful.

Decades ago a missionary brought several objects in ivory from China and we bought a bracelet and a necklace. Now it is forbidden to import such objects. But when I weared them I "established a contact" with the elephant whose teeth these beautiful objects were made of and honored him or her within my heart.

I love elephants since my childhood, because in Winter the Swiss National Circus was stationed in my hometown and to go to Kindergarten I passed every day near the elephants and became sort of familiar with them.

Love,
Margherita

This whole business is very sad. Humans are the cruelest beings in the animal kingdom.
I have lived in North Africa where ivory trinkets were widely available.
I never, ever bought, or will buy anything made of ivory or other items made by killing innocent animals.

Gisele

Thank you Margherita and Gisele.

I feel truly sad for the elephants.
I do hope that there will be a law everywhere that prohibits selling ivory objects and other items whereby animals are tortured to death.

Love,
Sue

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1416092.htm

Tuskless elephants evolving in China, scientists say
A recent study has predicted that more male Asian elephants in China will be born without tusks because poaching of tusked elephants is reducing the gene pool, the China Daily has reported.

The study, conducted in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in south-west China's Yunnan province, where two-thirds of China's Asian elephants live, found that the tuskless phenomenon is spreading, the report said.

The tusk-free gene, which is found in between 2 and 5 per cent of male Asian elephants, has increased to between 5 per cent and 10 percent in elephants in China, according to Zhang Li, an associate professor of zoology at Beijing Normal University.

"This decrease in the number of elephants born with tusks shows the poaching pressure for ivory on the animal," said Associate Professor Zhang, whose research team has been studying elephants since 1999 at a reserve in Xishuangbanna.

Only male elephants have tusks, which are said to be a symbol of masculinity and a weapon to fight for territory. However, due to poaching for ivory, the elephants' pride has become a death sentence, the report said.

"The larger tusks the male elephant has, the more likely it will be shot by poachers," said Associate Professor Zhang.

"Therefore, the ones without tusks survive, preserving the tuskless gene in the species."

A similar decline in elephants with tusks has been seen in Uganda, which experienced heavy poaching in the 1970s and '80s, the report said.

Humans have been incredibly cruel to elephants for a very long time. They have been tortured in circuses and slaughtered for their tusks.


Holly Bowman, a captive animal specialist with a master's degree in animal behavior, showed CBS4 a video compilation of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey elephant handlers. Hitting, poking, and disciplining elephants, both old and young.


I have never bought any objects made from animal tusks and will never even consider it.


Thank you for the enlightening and informative post.


Here is a little baby elephant who is allowed to experience a little happiness.
I borrowed this image from Sue's post, I hope you don't mind Sue. I fell in love with it immediately when I saw it.




Love,
yoko

Thank you Margherita,Inda, yoko, Gisele and Vicky.

You are more than welcome to use the image yoko. I think I borrowed it from Vicky originally.

http://www.ivorynet.com/banivorytrade/index.htm

The process involved in procuring ivory is indeed horrific. The elephant must be killed before the ivory can be procured - stoning, poison dart resulting in slow painful death or machine gun slaughter of entire herds at waterholes. Regardless of the mode in which the elephants are killed, the process of extracting the ivory is all the same. In order to obtain all the ivory from the elephant, the hunter and poacher must cut into the head because approximately 25% of the ivory is contained in the head. What is then left on the fields of the African or Asian plains is the corpse of a tusk less elephant with a mutilated face and head.



THE POACHING PROBLEM


Between 1979 and 1989, the worldwide demand for ivory caused elephant populations to decline to dangerously low levels. During this time period, poachings fueled by ivory sales cut Africa's elephant population in half. Since they were big targets and sported the largest tusks, savannah elephants took the worst hit. But as soon as these elephants began to vanish, hunters moved into the forests in search of the elephants' smaller kin. In 1977, 1.3 million elephants lived in Africa; by 1997, only 600,000 remained.




Elephant tusks are still prized.


Recently, that number has stabilized, due in large part to the 1990 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) ban on international ivory sales.

But in June, 1997, CITES voted partially to lift trade sanctions and to allow Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to sell stockpiled ivory to Japan, where there is a major ivory market. Many conservation groups fear that this slight loosening of the ivory ban will rekindle poaching throughout the elephants' range.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/elephants/poaching.html