President Obama Tell C.I.T.E.S.: Ban the International Ivory Trade!

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.