From TCExtra.com
Elephants and ivory, April 4 at Hunt Library
By PATRICK L. SULLIVAN
04/02
FALLS VILLAGE — In writing “Ivory’s Ghost: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants,” John Frederick Walker began by wondering why poaching continues, 20 years after a worldwide ban on the ivory trade in an effort to eliminate poaching and save the elephant.
Walker, a Kent resident who will read from his book Saturday, April 4, 6 p.m. at the D.M. Hunt Library, said, “Why isn’t the ban working better? Why are people still willing to kill for ivory?”
“Ivory’s Ghost” details the story of ivory from prehistory through the development of an industrial ivory trade in the 19th century, to the current situation in which some African countries continue to experience the problems associated with the illegal ivory trade and others have managed their elephant herds successfully enough to warrant legal sales.
The story has a Connecticut twist, with an examination of the ivory industry in Deep River and Ivoryton.
Walker had access to photocopies of the journal of E.D. Moore, who spent years in Africa buying ivory for Connecticut factories that made piano keys and billiard balls.
The photocopies were at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “When they were wheeled out, I was overwhelmed” by the sheer volume of material, Walker said. “The man made journal entries almost every day for 10 years.”
Moore also wrote a book in 1931, “Ivory: The Scourge of Africa” in which he described the human cost of the business. After transporting the ivory, the slaves were then sold: “The ‘dhows’ that lay at anchor off the town were packed with slaves awaiting transport to Arabia and the Gulf. Slaves lay on the sloping beach, dead slaves, not worth the burying, thrown there to rot until the tide carried their bloated bodies out to sea.”
A dhow is a small boat.
But it wasn’t until the late 1980s that animal activists and preservationists succeeded in imposing a global ban on the ivory trade — an accomplishment that Walker says has met with mixed results.
“People tend to think of elephants in isolation. They don’t realize how difficult it is to live with elephants.”
While some southern African countries — South Africa, Namibia, Botswana — have managed their herds successfully, other areas, wracked by civil war and corrupt governments, continue to experience poaching.
Further complicating the matter, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has maintained a two-tiered system, so that elephants in the troubled countries are listed as “endangered” and therefore subject to the ban, while herds in southern Africa are designated “threatened,” which allows for the occasional legal sale, mostly to Japan and China, for use in figurines and other small carved objects.
“There are tons and tons of ivory” already collected, Walker said. “The sale of ivory could help pay for elephant conservation.”
Walker points out that collecting tusks doesn’t automatically mean killing the elephants. If an elephant that dies of natural causes is found in time, the tusks are viable.
And he adds that some African countries, battling extreme poverty, resent what they see as the heavy-handed work of animal rights activists.
Acknowledging the appeal of the elephant, with its social structure and iconic “Babar” image, Walker nonetheless observed that, “Sometimes it seems they think elephants are more important than people.”
He believes that a sustainable-use policy — “not something that will fit on a bumper sticker” — is probably the best way to manage the ivory trade, which is not going to go away.
“It’s a magic material. Every society is drawn to it,” he explained.
“Ivory is not a passing fashion.”
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