Page 56 - Family like us Deon Final Final draft

The Blood is on

Us

T
his photo shows Ezolwini, one of the very few big
tuskers left in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
There are only 27 known big tuskers left in Africa, the
majority 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
trophy 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 spread were taken in an elephant
museum in South Africa. These are examples of all the big tusk-
ers 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 photos 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 died for that number of tusks.

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