Sanctuary plan for Myanmar elephants in captivity

“If nothing is done to provide financial support for these elephants, the government-owned elephants will be put back to work logging elsewhere, be cruelly trained for performance and live a life of begging, or released into the wild to fend for themselves,” says Dane Waters, The Elephant Project founder and president.

To read the full article click here.

Hillary Clinton and John Kasich: We cannot cede ground on animal poaching

This is an issue that we both have endeavored to shine light on, in and out of office. One of us (Clinton) worked with President Barack Obama to draw attention to African elephant poaching in the 2000s — when close to two-thirds of all remaining forest elephants were wiped out to meet the global demand for ivory — and embraced a strategy in 2013 through the Clinton Global Initiative to stop the killing and trafficking of elephants. The other (Kasich) supported legislation as a nine-term member of Congress to address the crisis and engaged President George W. Bush on the potential for losing the world’s elephants entirely without an international ban on the importation of ivory.

We supported bans on ivory sales in U.S. states with the largest markets — including New York, California and Hawaii — just as we supported action in Congress to close the domestic ivory market of our country, an action that encouraged other key countries such as China and Britain to do the same.

Read the full Op-Ed in The Washington Post.

Asian elephants face new threat in skin trade

BANGKOK -- Once targeted for their ivory tusks, Asia's already endangered elephants are facing a new threat to their survival: Poachers in Myanmar and elsewhere are selling their hides to be turned into purported cures for stomach ulcers and cancer as well as jewelry and prayer beads for sale in China. Elsewhere, the skins are being turned into luxury leather goods from golf bags and designer boots to wallets, belts and even motorcycle seats.

Trafficking in Asian elephant hides has grown over the past four years from small-scale sales of skins to a wholesale commercial trade. In Asia, this includes sales on open, online forums as well as by some Chinese pharmaceutical companies, according to the U.K.-based wildlife conservation group Elephant Family, which believes most of the Chinese products come from illegally traded Asian elephant hides. Legally licensed trade in hides from four African countries is strictly controlled and regulated.

Conservationists fear that elephant skin may even begin to replace ivory as a motive for poaching, and that any legal trade provides a loop-hole for illegal trade. For these reasons, they have urged countries to completely ban its importation.

A detailed report by the group, released Tuesday in Bangkok, traces the trafficking trail from hunters in Myanmar to operations there and in Laos where the skins are cut or ground into powder and then smuggled into China. In an earlier report, the Swiss-based World Wide Fund for Nature warned that elephant skinning may have spread to Thailand, India, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia.

Elephant Family's field researchers early this year found elephant products on sale in China's Yunnan, Guangdong and Fujian provinces. In Guangzhou, the vast seaport in Guangdong Province, the team met with traders who were clearly aware that dealing with Asian elephant skin was illegal. "These products were not visibly on display but when asked, traders produced them, one from a plastic bag on a top shelf," the report said.

Chinese medicine packaging touting the use of elephant skin powders (Courtesy of Elephant Family)

Monitoring online sites, the researchers found advertising for elephant hide products on forums like Baidu and identified at least 43 traders on the popular Chinese messaging platform WeChat. Messages extolled use of the products for stomach ailments and as a blood coagulant as well as for bracelets and necklaces made from the dried skin.

The overall value of the elephant hide trade is not known and prices vary, but the Elephant Family report said skin pieces were quoted online for $190 per kg, excluding delivery, and elephant skin powder for about $425 per kg. "The trade is clearly valuable enough for some people to be pushing it -- to do their best to create more demand to encourage sales," said Elephant Family's head of conservation, Belinda Stewart-Cox.

Dried elephant skins being carved into beads (Courtesy of Elephant Family)

Sold in one piece, the hide of one adult elephant, depending on size and skin quality, could raise as much as $30,000. When processed into individual products, this could multiply 10 times in market value to as much as $300,000, she said, while warning that inflated or "cherry-picked" estimates could prompt speculative poaching.

While parts from wild animals -- from pangolins to rhinoceroses and elephants -- have long been a staple of traditional Chinese medicine, the use of elephant hides for jewelry and other luxury products is a relatively recent development that is providing new incentive for illicit traders.

The Myanmar government has said that at least 59 elephant carcasses were found in the wilds last year, up from four in 2010, in a country that conservationists describe as one of the last remaining places in Asia with wildlands suitable for sustainable elephant populations.

Myanmar's wild elephant population has fallen dramatically, from an estimated 10,000 in the 1940s to less than 2,000 today. Between 30,000 to 50,000 wild Asian elephants are found in 13 Asian countries, according to the researchers.

"Asia's elephant populations are becoming increasingly fragmented and fragile. A trade that targets any elephant, of any age, could spell disaster for this endangered, slow breeding species," said Stewart-Cox.

Elephant Family, with Britain's Prince Charles and his wife Camilla serving as joint presidents, implements conservation projects in seven Asian countries.

"With this report our intention is not to apportion blame but to turn the spotlight onto the escalation of the trade and to call for the collaboration of governments, civil society and the wider public to tackle the issue before it threatens the survival of Asia's elephants," said Stewart-Cox.

Although still the world's largest consumer of wildlife products, China has in recent years stepped up arrests of wildlife traffickers and taken other measures to curb the elephant trade. It is a party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and from Jan. 1 this year banned all trade in ivory and ivory products. As a leading market for ivory, Beijing's decision was hailed by some as an important move to protect the world's elephant population.

But the report expressed concern that China's State Forestry Administration had apparently issued licenses for manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical products containing elephant skin which are being sold by several companies.

"Time will tell whether the anticipated ivory trade prompts an increased appetite for replacements from other species or other elephant parts," the report said.

In Myanmar several significant initiatives have been spurred by warnings that the country will lose its wild population in a few years if the current rate of killing -- one elephant a week -- continues.

With help from international organizations, the government in February launched a 10-year Myanmar Elephant Conservation Action Plan to secure the elephant population.

As part of the program, WWF will train, equip and deploy 10 anti-poaching teams to the most vulnerable areas. Separately, a Washington D.C.-based group, The Elephant Project, in March announced plans to establish a network of sanctuaries under a public-private partnership program worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Myanmar, providing for the relocation and care of Asian elephants in the country and translocation of some to regional countries.

Trump delays elephant trophy hunting, animal expert talks impact on wildlife conservation

WGN RADIO - Adam Roberts, Senior Advisor at The Elephant Project, works on the animal protection and wildlife conservation around the word. He joins Matt Bubala to talk about Trump’s swaying decision on lifting a trophy ban on bringing elephant parts back to the U.S. Roberts was surprised when Trump overruled his decision.  Roberts says elephants across Africa are being poached, and Zimbabwe was specifically recognized as one of two countries were trophies were allowed to come from.

Critics say hunting helps conservation efforts, but Roberts disagrees. “We hope that because trophy hunters pay for these thrill kills in Africa, that somehow the money is going to make it to conservation. The fact of the matter is, most of these hunting corporations or outfitters that do the safaris, are not even making it into the country where the animals exist. About two percent is actually making it to the local communities,” Roberts says.

If the government really cared about the well-being of elephants, Roberts says hunting is not the best option. “There’s much more money made by eco-tourism, not hunting tourism. Studies have shown more than ninety-eight percent of all tourism revenue across the entire African continent comes from wildlife tourism that’s not hunting based,” he says.  “If we really care about investing in these local economies, we want to do it in a sustainable way, and that’s eco-tourism.”

Generally, elephants can live up to sixty or seventy years in the wild. It’s important to keep these animals in their natural habitat, because that’s what draws in the local tourism, even if poaching has escalated.  Tune in for the full conversation.

Trump administration reverses ban on import of elephant trophies

USA TODAY - The Trump administration is reversing an Obama-era ban on hunters importing trophies of elephants killed in Zambia and Zimbabwe during government-approved big-game expeditions.

The move was confirmed to ABC News by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday following a recent announcement at a wildlife forum in South Africa, according to Safari Club International, a hunters’ group that filed a lawsuit to block a 2014 ban imposed by the Obama administration. A notice regarding this change will be posted in the Federal Register on Friday with more specifics on what new information justifies the changes, ABC reported. 

Though elephants are listed as endangered, a provision of the Endangered Species Act allows the government to give permits to import such trophies if there is evidence that the hunting benefits conservation for that species. Hunters typically pay hefty fees to local government agencies for permission to pursue the animals. The official told ABC that they have new information from Zimbabwe and Zambia to support reversing the ban to allow trophy hunting permits.

"Legal, well-regulated sport hunting as part of a sound management program can benefit the conservation of certain species by providing incentives to local communities to conserve the species and by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation," a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson said in a statement.

The decision sparked immediate outrage from animal-protection advocates.

"It's a venal and nefarious pay-to-slay arrangement that Zimbabwe has set up with the trophy hunting industry," said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society, told The Washington Post.

"What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it's just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?"

And the Elephant Project, which tries to protect the pachyderms called the suspension of the ban "reprehensible" in a Tweet.

The reversal follows a similar, though not well-publicized move in October in which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service overturned a similar ban on lion trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia, having found that hunting has enhanced the survival of the lion in these two southern African countries. The service, according to statement on its website, will re-evaluate the hunting programs in Zimbabwe and Zambia in mid-2018 to determine if import permits can continue for 2019 and beyond. 

A Minnesota wildlife photographer captured images of Cecil the Lion four years ago and says he didn't realize he had pictures of the animal until his death was reported this week. (July 30) AP

It was the death of a well-known and protected Zimbabwean lion, Cecil, at the hands of a Minnesota dentist in 2015 that brought huge attention to the industry, in which hunters pay as much as $50,000 to track and kill animals. In the incident, the dentist, Walter James Palmer, killed Cecil after he moved outside a national park, sparking a torrent of outrage. The animal had been fitted with a tracking device and was the subject of a study by Oxford University scientists.