Sabtu, 15 September 2012

Religious Practices Can Be Linked to Elephant Poaching


One need not be an economist or a marketing specialist to figure out the fact that, as far as businesses are concerned, supply and demand are very much intertwined, meaning that they both rely on and influence each other.

According to a new study, the same principles apply should we take some time and look into how the global ivory market works: unless some people are willing to buy various items made from this material, poachers do not go around slaughtering these animals just for the sake of entertainment.

Moreover, as this new report suggests, most of the ivory taken from dead elephants and put on illegal markets worldwide is used to manufacture religious trinkets such as miniature saints, prayer beads, amulets and carvings.

It can, therefore, be argued that, at least for the time being, a very specific category of religious practices plays a major part in decimating the global elephant population, simply because some of the people engaging in such practices require their faith to somehow be backed up by items made from ivory.

As Mongabay informs us, the people who put together this report argue that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, for short) has so far failed in properly regulating wildlife trade in such ways that elephant ivory trafficking is put an end to.

One green-oriented group known as the Environmental Investigation Agency goes as far as to argue that, “The CITES ivory-trading mechanism is profoundly flawed, empirically unsupportable and has itself become a major driver of poaching and the illegal international trade in ivory."

Although it may be true that, under various circumstances, ivory can be legally used to manufacture items which are later on to be used in religious practices, the fact remains that for the most part, nobody is able to say for sure whether their newly acquired trinkets can or cannot be linked to the slaughter of countless such animals in several remote areas of Africa.

Via: Religious Practices Can Be Linked to Elephant Poaching

Tidak ada komentar:

Posting Komentar