Ivory Worship

National Geographic Magazine ^ | Oct. 2012 | By Bryan Christy Photographs by Brent Stirton

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"IN JANUARY 2012 A HUNDRED RAIDERS ON HORSEBACK CHARGED OUT OF CHAD INTO CAMEROON’S BOUBA NDJIDAH NATIONAL PARK, SLAUGHTERING HUNDREDS OF ELEPHANTS—entire families—in one of the worst concentrated killings since a global ivory trade ban was adopted in 1989. Carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, they dispatched the elephants with a military precision reminiscent of a 2006 butchering outside Chad’s Zakouma National Park. And then some stopped to pray to Allah.

Seen from the ground, each of the bloated elephant carcasses is a monument to human greed. Elephant poaching levels are currently at their worst in a decade, and seizures of illegal ivory are at their highest level in years.

From the air too the scattered bodies present a senseless crime scene—you can see which animals fled, which mothers tried to protect their young, how one terrified herd of 50 went down together, the latest of the tens of thousands of elephants killed across Africa each year.

THE PHILIPPINES CONNECTION In an overfilled church Monsignor Cristobal Garcia, one of the best known ivory collectors in the Philippines, leads an unusual rite honoring the nation’s most important religious icon, the Santo Niño de Cebu (Holy Child of Cebu).

The ceremony, which he conducts annually on Cebu, is called the Hubo, from a Cebuano word meaning “to undress.” Several altar boys work together to disrobe a small wooden statue of Christ dressed as a king, a replica of an icon devotees believe Ferdinand Magellan brought to the island in 1521.

They remove its small crown, red cape, and tiny boots, and strip off its surprisingly layered underwear. Then the monsignor takes the icon, while altar boys conceal it with a little white towel, and dunks it in several barrels of water, creating his church’s holy water for the year, to be sold outside."

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As this sub-title to the Nat. Geo. Mag. suggests there is more to the story of Ivory smuggling by a deviant Philippine priest:

"Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Can the slaughter be stopped?"

[MuttTheHoople]

Where animals are “protected”, there’s wholesale slaughter. Where animals are harvested as a profitable crop, there’s an abundance. I know Elephants are intelligent animals, but they’re still animals. On one hand, I’d love to see the day we didn’t have any animals senselessly slaughtered. However, turn ivory harvesting into a legal business would actually help the elephant population in the long run.

[Mr. Quarterpanel]

An excellent example of this is the scimitar horned Oryx which was wiped out in Africa and imported and raised in Texas.

Texas now boasts a large population of this animal, and exports them to Africa to re-introduce them to their native lands, where they are subsequently eliminated due to poaching.

The reason? Texas Ranchers allow hunts for profit, and conserve the animals to keep the herd healthy and hunters and their money coming in.

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It’s my understanding that there are places in Africa that the elephants are allowed to be killed on a controlled basis and most importantly, the locals get their share.

Thus they see a reason to preserve the herds like they might do with cattle. And an incentive to fight poachers.

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Somehow there has to an incentive for keeping the herds going, perhaps allowing hunts but sharing the profit with locals so they’ll work against the poachers and treat the elephants as a farm animal might be.