Page 56 - Family like us Deon Final Draft low-res

The Blood is on

Us

T
his photo shows Ezolwini, one of the very few big tusk-
ers left in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. There
are only 27 known big tuskers left in Africa, the majori-
ty of them in Tsavo, Kenya.
Their ivory makes them very sought after on the black markets
of Asia.
In the 1970s there were roughly 1.5 million elephants on the
African continent. Today we have 350,000 elephants left. We
are losing around 100 elephants a day due to poaching and tro-
phy hunting.
With all the genes for big tusks removed from the gene pool,
each generation of elephants is born with smaller tusks.
The photos on the next page were taken in an elephant museum
in South Africa. These are examples of all the big tuskers that
were roaming the plains of Africa in the past. Humans have
been hunting elephants for a long time to use as trophies on
their walls and to pose in old photo next to a dead elephant.
The hunger for ivory on the black markets in Asia is the biggest
cause for the death of our elephants.
The photo shows a huge stack of elephants’ tusks that was con-
fiscated by government in South Africa in one year; imagine
how many elephants were lost for that number of tusks.