Every ten minutes, an wild African elephant is killed by poachers for its tusks, the mutilated carcass left to rot in the sun.
The African elephant population has been more than halved since 1980, from 1,200,000 to 420,000 in 2012.
At this rate they will be extinct in the wild in little over 10 years, unless something very effective is done about it.
That something begins with the ban on the U.S. ivory trade, announced mid-February by President Obama. The next urgently needed step is for our President to limmediately urge the Convention on International Trade in Exotic Species to enact an international ban on trade in all elephant ivory.
This same ban was in force in the 1990's and resulted in a substantial increase in the African wild elephant population.
Since the ban was partly lifted, in 1999, to allow sales of existing ivory stockpiles, poaching has ballooned to epic proportions--it is impossible to tell "existing" stockpiles from poached ivory. This poaching fuels international crime syndicates and civil wars in Africa.
The C.I.T.E.S. ban on the ivory trade worked before; it can work again.
Please help the elephants by signing the petition and promoting it on all your social media contacts.
Or in little over ten years we will wake up to a world without elephants.
Update #210 years ago
This petition is being closed.
It is being replaced with a petition to all nations
to ban domestic and foreign trade in all ivory,
with special attention to the nations with the biggest ivory trade:
China, with 70% of the world's ivory trade, and the other big ivory markets:
Thailand
Vietnam
Indonesia
Malaysia
Phillipines
Only the outlawing of the ivory trade will stop the slaughter of elephants: 40,000 last year alone.
Update #110 years ago
The only way to stop the illegal ivory trade is to ban all domestic and international trade in ivory!
Despite a supposed ban on ivory trade since 1989, poachers kill an elephant every 10 minutes.
Let us keep telling the U.S. President to lead CITES to ban ALL international ivory trade, and all CITES member states to ban all domestic and foreign ivory trade
Please prevent the extinction of elephants by posting this petition on all your social media
