TEXT E African elephants have
been slaughtered at alarming rate over the past decade, largely because they are
the primary source of the world’s ivory. Their population has been dwindled from
1.3 million in 1979 to just 625,000 today, and the rate of killing has been
accelerating in recent years because many of the older, bigger tusked animals
have already been destroyed. "The poachers now must kill times as. many
elephants to get the same quantity of ivory. "explained Curtis Bohlen, Senior
vice president of the World Wildlife Fund. Though its record on
the environment has been spotty so far, the government last week took the lead
in a major conservation issue by imposing a ban on ivory imports into the US.
The move came just four days after a consortium of conservation groups,
including the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation International,
called for that kind of action, and it made the US the first nation to forbid
imports of both raw and finished ivory. The ban, says Bohlen, sends a very clear
message to the ivory poachers that the game is over. In the past
African nations have resisted an ivory ban, but increasingly they realized that
the decimation of the elephant herds poses a serious threat to their tourist
business, Last month Tanzania and several other African countries called for an
amendment to the 102 nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species that would make the ivory trade illegal world wide. The amendment is
expected to be approved at an October meeting in Geneva and to go into effect
next January. But between now and then, conservationists contend, poachers may
go on a rampage, killing elephants wholesale, so nations should unilaterally
forbid imports right away. The US government brought that argument, and by
week’s end the twelve nation European Community had followed with its own
ban. What’s the author’s attitude