If Consumers Could See the Elephants’ Agony

I enjoyed Maureen Sajbel’s July 10 piece on the continuing international ivory ban, however, I was honestly confused by the headline. “The Agony & the Ivory.” Whose agony is this referring to? The customers who can’t legally obtain new ivory, or the dealers who can’t profit from prices after the ’89 ban?

I would hope the term agony applies to the elephants, who surely suffer when poachers machine-gun them into submission, then take a chain saw to their faces while the mammals lie there in bloody shock.

Perhaps if consumers knew more about this intelligent creature, they’d never purchase ivory in the future, whether the ban was lifted or not.

Perhaps if consumers realized that when an elephant’s family finds its body they caress its skeleton, staying with it for days, then slowly cover it with dirt, they’d think twice about an antique ivory end table. If consumers could see a large elephant crouch to its knees to safely play with a smaller calf, they’d reconsider that ivory chess set on a dealer’s display shelf. If consumers could witness a clan of elephants wrap their trunks about each other at a family “reunion,” they’d see ivory jewelry, ironically carved into the form of a living elephant, as one of the ugliest symbols of greed imaginable.

I don’t want to see a future issue of The Times reporting that one of the world’s most fascinating creatures has gone the way of the dodo or passenger pigeon. Anyone interested in elephant conservation may write to:

Elefriends

Elephant Protection Group

Cherry Tree Cottage

Coldharbor, Dorking

Surrey, RH5 6HA

United Kingdom

JULIE STEVENS

Fresno