Elephants: Locals and Activists versus International Gangs
Community conservancies provide jobs as rangers and income to poor local people. Then the clans protect the elephants. Elephants are being killed faster than they can reproduce. Their range has decreased from 3 million square miles in 1978 to 1 million square miles in 2007. The Russian mob, Irish organized gangs, the Chinese mafia, and African and Asian gangs control the $ 188 million per year illegal ivory trade. This is part of the huge, $ 19 Billion per year illegal trade in plants and animals: illicit timber, animals, birds, rhino horns, animal pelts, .... There are many good groups working to save elephants: the Environmental Investigation Agency, Born Free USA, Wildllfe Direct, Save the Elephants, the park and wildlife wardens, Kenya's Northern Rangelands Trust (that do the community conservancies), the International Fund for Animal Welfare, WWF's TRAFFIC, the Project for the Application of Law for Fauna, Wildlife Direct, Maisha Consulting, ConflictArmament, C4ADS, Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, Elephant Listening Project, Global Witness, Eagle Wildlife Law Enforcement, the Max Planck Institute, and Greenpeace. link ( some of the groups come from the other articles: New Yorker and Earth Island.)
