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Nosey at Roanoke Fall Festival, Elephant Enrichment, Illegal Elephant Trade in Laos, Elephant In The Room, What is an Ivory Crush, Seeni, Pittsburgh Zoo, Mohan Giveaway & Santa Fe, NM Banned Traveling Wild and Exotic Animal Acts

End the Illegal Asian Elephant Trade in Laos
The Southeast Asian country of Laos is known as the “Land of a Million Elephants.” But year after year that nickname seems to hold less truth. Since the 1980s their elephant population has fallen by more than 75% leaving fewer than 600 to 800 wild pachyderms left.  

Now, experts say that number could plummet even further if the Laotian government doesn’t stop its citizens from spiriting the threatened species over the border to China and selling them to zoos and other facilities for thousands of dollars.

According to reports, over the past couple of years nearly 100 elephants from Laos have been sold into captivity in China. That’s anywhere from 12% to 16% of the remaining population.

According to CITES - the international treaty charged with protecting endangered animals - every one of these sales was illegal. According to the treaty, elephants sired by one or more wild parent are considered wild and therefore cannot be traded commercially. And any commercial trade that does take place must do so with animals born in an approved captive bred facility of which Laos has none.

Soon, the second largest land animal in the world could pull a disappearing act in the entire nation of Laos.  If the government doesn’t get control of the illegal export of its national animal, it will be more than a national tragedy, it will be a national disgrace. Please sign the petition and tell President Bounnhang Vorachith to end the illegal elephant trade and crackdown on those who participate in it.
Seeni the elephant lost her mother and family in the terrible elephant culls of South Africa twenty years ago. It was a time when elephants were considered a threat to the well being of other wildlife and so they were killed mercilessly, to decrease their populations. 

But these slaughters left Seeni and other elephants like her without the care of their mother. And because of that, she never learned how to take care of the baby elephants she would one day give birth to. But even though the Pittsburgh Zoo knew Seeni wouldn't know how to care for her young, they bred her anyways. 

Her baby lived three months before the zoo had to euthanize her. 

Seeni had given birth once before, when she was held captive in a Botswanan "nature reserve" where she was used as a riding elephant for tourists. Her first born didn't even last a month. 

Activists believe Seeni has dealt with too much trauma and lacks the necessary mothering skills and that she should never be bred again. Doing so could have terrible consequences for her to-be-offspring and on Seeni herself. 

Tell the Pittsburgh Zoo to do the right thing. Tell them to take Seeni out of their elephant breeding program and instead send her to a certified sanctuary where she can live out the rest of her days in peace.  
Santa Fe Just Banned Traveling Wild and Exotic Animal Acts. Santa Fe, New Mexico, has just banned traveling wild and exotic animal acts, becoming the latest area to take a significant step against animal exploitation for entertainment purposes. According to the legislation, all circuses, petting zoos, animal acts, shows, and exhibits are now banned from using wild or exotic animals, unless for “exclusively educational purposes.”

The City Council voted for the ban on September 13, 2017, the ordinance being brought by Councilor Signe Lindell and co-sponsored by Councilor Peter Ives. “We’re ready tonight to say Santa Fe will not tolerate the known cruelty that these exotic performing animals suffer,” said Lindell about the ruling, as reported by Santa Fe New Mexican.

A large number of animal rights activists and advocates testified in favor of the proposal, which is going to cut short the suffering of many animals used and often abused in circuses and similar “attractions.” There were also several voices claiming that the city was going “too far” and worried about the future of the local rodeos and the pet parade. Overall, however, the public support for the ban was overwhelming.

Although a great step in the right direction, the new ban does not include rodeos which will remain legal within the city limits, supposedly because of its longstanding tradition in the area. Doug Nava, a former state tax examiner, called the legislation “purely hypocritical” for that exclusion and pressed councilors not to pass the ban until it can “protect all animals.”

While the new ordinance does fail to address some forms of animal exploitation for human entertainment, it is certainly a big win for the animals nevertheless and has a chance to be the beginning of a series of further changes. “I think we need to start somewhere,” said Councilor Renee Villarreal regarding the concerns.

According to Animal Defenders International, so far 71 U.S. municipalities have introduced full or partial bans on circuses using animals. Hopefully, we will continue to see upward momentum for similar legislation and move closer to a world where animals don’t have to suffer for the sake of our entertainment. Image source: Free-Photos/Pixabay

What is an Ivory Crush and Are They a Good Idea? Earlier this summer, two tons of confiscated ivory was crushed in New York City’s Central Park. Trinkets, statues, and jewelry all crafted from the tusks of at least 100 poached elephants were destroyed, with some of the items estimated to be very valuable. For instance, one pair of carved ivory towers was worth $850,000.

So why was all of this ivory turned into dust if was so valuable? The ivory crush was to show New York’s commitment to take a stand against the illegal ivory trade. Elephant poaching is has reached international crisis levels. For decades, elephants have faced the looming threat of extinction as tusks are savagely ripped from their faces to satisfy the global demand for ivory. This illegal trade is fraught with corruption on every level, and profits benefit dangerous terrorist groups.

Ivory crushes are intended to bring public awareness and the urgent need to stop this wildlife crisis. According to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), government officials at events like the recent New York ivory crush, in about two dozen countries in Africa, Asia, and North America, have destroyed more than 200 tons of seized illicit wildlife products.

It is estimated that around one elephant is killed every 15 minutes for their tusks, totaling out to the loss of 100 elephants a day. Given the slow reproduction rates of elephants, many scientists believe they could be extinct from the wild within the next 20 years.
The Global Ivory Ban
In the 1970s and 1980s, the population of African elephants was essentially sliced in half, from 1.3 million to a mere 600,000. In an effort to protect the elephant population, an international ban on ivory was enacted in 1989. The positive result of the ban was undeniable: ivory became taboo, markets dried up, prices bottomed out, poaching declined, and elephant populations began to stabilize.

But the trend didn’t last. Under the legislation, any ivory that was in circulation before the ban could still be imported and exported. In light of this “loophole,” new ivory has been able to slip into circulation with traders falsifying documents and antiquing ivory products to make them appear as if they pre-date the ban.

Since January 2012 alone, more than 103,000 elephants are thought to have been slaughtered by poachers. And unfortunately, wildlife law enforcement agents cannot keep up or compete with well-funded, violent, criminal networks that poach elephants and move ivory. Criminal groups around the globe are able to run thanks to the profits made from the illegal wildlife trade. The Elephant Action League carried out an eighteen-month investigation that uncovered the ties between the sale of elephant ivory and funds for the terrorist organization, Al-Shabaab. These profits enable terrorist organizations to purchase ammunition and weapons. Considering a kilogram of ivory can sell for $3,000 on the black market and the statistic that 35,000 elephants are poached for their ivory every year … we can only imagine the funds available to these organizations.

But Are Ivory Crushes Effective?
Now, animal welfare advocates are once again left with a resolve to fight at international, national, and state levels to protect elephants, rhinos and other species killed for their body parts. What’s one way to draw attention to the dwindling elephant population? Ivory crushes.

Ivory crushes started way back in 1989 when Dr. Richard Leakey, the newly named director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, needed a unique way to draw attention to the poaching crisis.

Instead of lobbying in the traditional way, Dr. Leakey decided to burn the country’s entire stockpile of confiscated ivory, which included 12 tons of tusks worth around $3 million (which would be $5.75 million today).  
“The idea was to communicate that ivory has no value, except to the elephant,” Dr. Paula Kahumbu, CEO of the Nairobi-based conservation agency WildlifeDirect told Atlas Obscura. “Like the PETA fur campaign in the 1960s, those who owned ivory began to feel guilty and uncomfortable, as their trinkets and jewelry represented death. The destruction led to a public shaming, and demand collapsed, leading to a drop in the price of ivory. In turn, this meant profitability for poachers. Traffickers evaporated and poaching stopped,”

From there, a domino effect happened with other countries joining in and hosting their ivory crushes. For instance, in July 2011, the Lusaka Agreement Task Force burned five tons of ivory. Denver, Colorado, crushed six tons of ivory in November 2013 and China destroyed exactly one-tenth of a ton more in January 2014.

Many of questioned whether ivory crushes are effective, given how complex the elephant poaching industry is. Joe Walston, the Vice President of Global Conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society said of those who criticize the ivory crushes, “like criticizing a car for not making coffee in the morning.” Instead, they’re “a symbolism of commitment [that] needs to be followed up by action.”

But are ivory crushes actually doing the opposite of what they intend?

According to Dr. Daniel Stiles, the act of crushing ivory stockpiles is actually increasing the global demand for ivory, causing the price of raw ivory to skyrocket, giving poachers and traders, even more, of an incentive to illegally slaughter animals.
The publicity that is drawn to ivory crushes is adding fuel to the fire, motivating poachers to work even harder. And research backs this idea. The UNEP‘s findings that poaching has, in fact, increased steadily since 2006. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, 2011 was the worst year for elephants since before the ban was put into place.

With the most recent ivory crush in New York City earlier this summer, one of the world’s busiest cities, a definite symbolic gesture may have been sent to wildlife poachers. But with ivory crushes garnering heavy media coverage, perhaps what we really should be discussing is proactive measures in place to prevent illegal poaching from happening in the first place.

Ivory crushes are simply an empty gesture that doesn’t change that fact that “a couple thousand elephants” (the words of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) were unjustly killed in the first place.

What’s the Solution?
Instead of showing after the elephant is killed that poaching is not okay, animal welfare advocates need to draw more attention to the many wonderful organization that are working tirelessly to stop poaching from ever happening in the first place.

For instance, the World Wildlife Fund has developed a comprehensive plan to mitigate the many crimes wrought against the elephant populations of Africa and Asia. Part of this plan involves educating local communities on the importance of the elephant population to reduce human-elephant conflict. The WWF has also helped to establish wildlife reserves for elephants and employs local community members to protect these areas.

TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network works in collaboration with the WWF and the International Union for Conservation of Nature to keep a record of global ivory seizures. Monitoring this data helps to identify illegal trade routes and mark threats to elephant populations.

The best thing you can do to help end the wildlife trade is to stop purchasing wild animal products. Every ivory trinket was created from an elephant that was killed. By spreading awareness about the plight of elephants and all of world’s endangered wildlife, we can help people see the consequences of their actions. Share this post and help save these amazing animals while they’re still here. Lead image source: Megan Coughlin/Flickr

This week’s profile looks at the vital role “enrichments” play in providing our elephants with a fun, healthy, and healing environment. Enrichments are simply structures and activities that allow elephants to engage in their own natural behavior — and your support makes them possible!
In the wild, most of an elephant’s day is spent foraging, grazing, and exploring in search of food and water for their herdTheir social interactions, their migratory pathways, nearly everything revolves around this quest. They'll travel up to 30 miles a day through dense jungles, open expanses, and water bodies. And depending on the season and their home region, they can consume a surprisingly wide variety of foods — different species of grasses, shrubs, and trees (leaves and branches) as well as fruits, tubers, vegetables, and herbs. Using their legendary intelligence and the generations of knowledge passed down from adults in the herd (particularly the matriarch), wild elephants are experts at managing their diets and even self-medicating in times of health trouble.

Born to roam

For elephants in captivity, however, the situation is completely different. Their diets likely consist of a single type of whatever food that is available, a meager quantity of which is generally tossed onto the ground where they are chained. Captivity doesn’t just deny elephants their freedom to live as wild animals — it also deprives them of the chance to exhibit natural behaviors, to use their keen intelligence and social skills. Their food poses them no challenge, neither physical nor mental, while also providing them very little by way of nutrition.

When Wildlife SOS rescues elephants, we vow to do everything in our power to give them a life of happiness, health, and companionship, and a chance to be elephants again — to rediscover their natural instincts and wisdom. But through the decades of systematic abuse, neglect, and crushing boredom in their past, their wild spirits were broken, and many of these elephants have lost touch with their own true nature. Accustomed to being given their food in a pile on the ground, and having gotten used to standing chained in one place for hours on end with no opportunity to move, these elephants have lost critical years of exercise and mental stimulation. The result is often a dismaying host of physiological and psychological issues.
At our Elephant Conservation and Care Center, we use “enrichments” as a key way to help our rescued elephants heal from their traumatic pasts through the stimulation of natural and instinctive behaviors. With the triple benefit of encouraging exercise, interaction, and thinking to obtain their food, enrichments play a vital role in teaching our elephants something invaluable: to be elephants again!

An example of this might be simply hanging hay nets and suspended feeders, which allow us to hoist food high enough up that an elephant has to reach to get to it. We also use cage feeders fixed to the outer ends of elephant enclosures that require them to carefully navigate their trunks through ports and over obstacles to access food. Food-based enrichments are always great because there’s no incentive quite like a good meal to get the elephants on their feet and making an effort. They also provide an incentive for elephants to interact and even work with each other. Case in point: We recently introduced an enrichment we call the Nutty Barrel to our two youngest elephants — Peanut and Coco — in the form of a rolling, suspended barrel filled with peanuts, which will only fall out if the elephants use their trunks to spin the barrel. Thrilled with their newest toy, Peanut and Coco worked at perfecting their process, eventually discovering that through cooperation, they could each get a delightful shower of peanuts to rain down on the other!

Feeling enriched 

Enrichments don’t always have to be built, however. Even the long walks our elephants take every day provide vital enrichment to their lives,giving them a chance to engage their senses in a variety of new sights, smells, and sounds while allowing them to indulge their roaming instincts. These walks also encourage them to interact with each other and their surroundings, and provide a great form of exercise for the elephants, much like their water pools provide. Our elephants love their pools, and the simple addition of a tire or floating tube really gets them going!

We at Wildlife SOS have lots of rewarding fun coming up with new ideas to enrich our elephants’ lives, and we take immense satisfaction in knowing that as fun as enrichments are, they also give our elephants a much-needed boost to heal both mentally and physically. Thank you for supporting this important program all along!
We're giving away our very last gold Mohan pendant! This pendant is super special: you helped us design it, and Mohan himself blessed it (see photograph below). Join Mobile Cause today and we'll enter you in our sweepstakes to win this beautiful item! Joining Mobile Cause is easy: just text the word PENDANT to the phone number 51555 on your mobile device, and you're in! (If you have any trouble with this process on your phone, see our quick how-to page at this link.)

MOHAN BLESSING HIS PENDANTS 

Joining Mobile Cause is a great way to stay connected to Wildlife SOS, get weekly wildlife videos and/or occasional important-news alerts if you want, or make a difference for India's animals — all from the convenience of your phone. As for the pendant, it's solid gold — a perfect tribute to the amazing elephant you helped rescue from chains. The front features an etching of the mighty tusker himself, and the back is inscribed with a phrase that you helped us pick: "Mohan: Majestic and Free" (see photos above). 

Thank you and good luck!