With a heavy heart and tears in my eyes, I am very sad to say that Cites chose to ignore our pleas, as today’s vote meant that it has been decided that elephants will unfortunately stay listed as Appendix II, like African lions, meaning that they will not receive the protection that they so desperately need.
Although there was a strong support from many countries, the proposal for the up-listing of elephants didn’t get the two-thirds majority that was required, with the EU being a key party in the defeat of the ivory ban, as they voted as a block instead of individually.
This is a very serious setback for the conservation of elephants, meaning that the trade of ivory products could continue in the future, and therefore so will the statistics of 1 elephant being killed every 15 minutes every single day until there are no elephants left.
In 2016, are ivory products really still seen as a status symbol and luxury product over the value of one of the world’s most iconic and kindest creatures? No they are not.
I was shocked at the newspaper headlines today about famous-for-nothing reality stars being robbed of materialistic tangible goods, with absolutely no mention of the outcome of today’s vote and the 100,000 elephants that have been killed in the space of only one year because of this ruling which remains. But perhaps this is why we aren’t getting anywhere.
Because the world is more concerned about the possession of expensive, tangible status symbols and celebrities’ lives over the natural richness of our rapidly diminishing wildlife. Until the world can see how much more value the latter has over the former craze giving our younger generation false morals, we will not see progress for our natural world until it is diminished.
Enough is enough.
According to Jess 