The Slaughter of the AFRICAN PANDAS

It can be read on the poster: Protect the pandas of Africa - The Elephants 

Image courtesy of WildAid

Every day, 100 African elephants are killed illegally for their ivory. China is the final destination for most of this white gold ivory and a single tusk can fetch more than $8,000 on the Chinese black market. 

Worth around $ 4bn annually, the trade funds terrorist organisations such as al-Shabaab, which recently attacked the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi.

“The Blood Ivory: Behind the Largest Ivory Smuggling Cases in China”, tells us about a surging demand from middle class consumers which led to an alarming killing rate of 100 elephants a day. Conservationists estimate that up to 35,000 elephants may have been killed in 2012 alone.

In September, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) gave these efforts a boost when it launched a massive push to catalyze support for stopping "blood ivory".

ESAC agreed unanimously to destroy 28 tonnes of Hong Kong’s stockpile by incineration after a four-hour meeting with government officials. The first raft of ivory tusks and trinkets will be destroyed within the next six months and the remaining stockpile will be burned over the next two years.

Will this be enough? Perhaps not, but certainly will create a general awareness that poaching is targeted not only by conservationists but also by governments worldwide.