Word: tusk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...members of the panel--sponsored jointly by the Kennedy School, the International Tusk Fund and the Energy and Environmental Policy Center--said the most effective method of protecting elephants is to involve communities at a grass-roots level...
Repeated attempts to control the ivory trade have failed. The current system, set up under CITES in 1986, requires ivory-producing nations to adopt export quotas intended to safeguard existing elephant populations. In addition, each tusk in international trade must be covered by an export permit and marked with a unique serial number, which is recorded in a computer in Cambridge, England. Theoretically, that number allows nations to trace the tusk as it passes from country to country in trade. But many quotas have been ill-considered or ignored, falsified export documents have been discovered in numerous nations, and corrupt...
...ivory gets from Africa to the Far East. Over the past decade, as much as four-fifths of that ivory has been of illegal origin -- poached, then smuggled. Sometimes the poachers cross borders to hunt, as from Somalia into Kenya or Zambia into Zimbabwe, then carry the tusks back by night. Some poachers are tribal villagers, illiterate and poor, who stalk their prey on foot, walking for weeks, living off game. A poacher in Kenya says he believes tribal charms make him invisible to antipoaching units. He buries his tusks in the village latrine or hides them in a nearby...
Demand for ivory is falling, but perhaps not fast enough. In 1979 Hong Kong imported 521 tons, representing 31,000 elephants. Last year it imported only 290 tons, but it took at least 33,000 elephants to meet the reduced demand. That is because tusk sizes during the period fell from about 18 lbs. to 9 lbs. Older elephants have been wiped out in many herds, and younger animals are now the targets. Breeding patterns have been disrupted. In Tanzania's Mikumi National Park, 72% of the elephant families observed in a recent study were either missing adult females...
...believed his ivory was found in the fields of Africa at a common elephant graveyard. Fifteen years ago, he learned the truth. As he moved a section of ivory through a saw, the blade came to a screeching halt and broke. He looked down; in the heart of the tusk was a corroded mass of steel -- a bullet. "When I saw that, I realized," he says, caressing a figurine in his hands. "I was shocked. If I had anything else to do, I'd change my job." From that day on, he has placed the ivory section with the bullet...