African Ivory Trade

Similarly to UNEP et al. (2013), in Brendan Moyle’s (2014) article “The Raw and the Carved: Shipping Costs and Ivory Smuggling,” he also shows how African elephant ivory seizures have increased over recent years. For his article, Moyle (2014) collected and used data from UNEP to make a graph showing total seizures of African elephant ivory from 1996 until 2012. His graph also shows the weight of the ivory from the seizures (see figure 3). From Moyle’s graph, one can see that the most ivory seizures in more recent years have been dominated with ivory that is >1000kg. Moyle (2014) explains how increasing poaching rates are reflected in the increase of seizure rates of raw ivory. The rapid increase in ivory seizures >1000kg over recent years is …show more content…
In fact, ivory trade is only damaging the economies of many nations, especially in Africa. In a report done by Wanjohi Kabukuru (2013), he describes how poaching is hurting African economies, mainly through tourism. The East African Community (EAC) nations that include Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi and parts of the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) rely on tourism as a key sector of their economies, and poaching is directly negatively affecting tourism in these areas (Kabukuru, 2013). To put it into perspective, according to Kabukuru (2013) tourism accounts for about 17% of Tanzania’s GDP, 12% of Kenya’s, 4% of Uganda’s, 3.6% of Burundi’s and 3.3% of Rwanda’s. When elephant populations decline due to poaching, tourism takes a hard hit because elephants are usually one of the main animals that tourists want to see. The loss of revenue from tourism in Africa is of great concern considering how tourism creates jobs and contributes necessary resources for national development. The killing of elephants for ivory threatens not only the wildlife, but the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on tourism and those who put their lives at risk protecting the