Battle For The Elephants

I watched the Science Shows in the PBS documentaries with the episode titled “Battle for the Elephants”. The show is about the dangers facing the elephant, which is the largest land animal from poaching by the human beings, who are almost leading the animal to extinction. The elephant is subjected to brutal market forces that have forced the price of its tusks to be comparable to the precious metals, making it to a prime target for human beings who want to make money from it.

The tusks are not used for any good purposes, rather based on some myths associated with its value that are not true, yet the animals are being killed at an alarming rate for it. The problems of the tusk lie in the art of ivory carving that has been in existence in China for over 2000 years, and is now a perverted symbol of some religions. The elephant tasks are carved into religious elements in factories that are, surprisingly, set up by the China state authorities.

One of the most interesting things in this documentary is the rapid decrease of the elephant population by 1800, and what was left by 1900, when the government started to impose bans on this trade. There were 26 million of them found in Africa before the rapid decrease. Data from the census that was done in 1979, indicates there were only 1.3 million of them. Going by that rate implies that this mammal will be extinct if appropriate measures are not taken to ban the trade. The film relates to the number of topics studied in class, such as the reasons for classifying some animals as endangered species and role played by various species of animals in the ecosystem. In brief, the episode shows that elephants will continue facing extinction threats if appropriate conservation measures are not going to be in place.