Conviction rates for crimes from handling of wildlife trophies will rise after the Kenya wildlife Service opens a Sh100 million forensic laboratory later this year. The laboratory will also help to trace the origin of trophies confiscated. The report says once ivory has been hacked off an elephant, there is a transfer from the poachers to trafficking networks capable of trafficking the ivory internationally but legally. It adds that between 2009 and June 2014, 18,817 kilogrammes of ivory were seized at the Mombasa port. Germanbased company, Qiagen, donated a machine to the Kenya Wildlife Service, for use in forensics that can aid in convictions. Courts are now expected to rely on watertight forensic evidence for convictions. Kenya's poaching law has also netted foreigners flying through Kenya with illegal ivory.
I think these laws are very necessary and long overdue. From what I've seen and experienced Elephants are extremely gentle and also very abused animals. They provide man with a lot of beautiful and valuable resources that some are willing to take horrific measures to attain. The way they are handled is sickening and simply inhumane, No living creature should have to go through that. I believe this will provide elephants with a level of safety nobody has cared to offer them in the past.
It's crazy to know that elephants can be treated this way. Did you know that Elephants pay homage to the bones of their dead, gently touching the skulls and tusks with their trunks and feet. when an elephant walks past a place that a loved one has died, he/she will stop dead still; a silent and empty pause that can last several minutes. That is something so similar to what a human would do. I feel as though if humans have laws to protect them why not animals? But I'm glad that these laws are being taken into consideration. Maybe the start of protection of elephants will start a chain reaction to protect all other animals being abused too. (http://www.happyelephantcontest.com/fun-facts/)
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ReplyDeleteI agree with both Kaylah and Val. Like Kaylah said elephants provide valuable resources to the environment. They are so important because elephants are keystone species. A keystone species is a plant or animal that plays a unique and crucial role in the way an ecosystem functions. If we didn't have these keystone species the ecosystem would be extremely different or not exist at all. Elephants have a habit of uprooting trees and the undergrowth from doing that can turn savannah into grassland. So because of how important they are you would think these laws would have already been made but it's better to start now rather than later.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant#Behaviour_and_life_history
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/keystone-species/?ar_a=1