Massacre in Masai Mara, the tragedy continues

African Forest Elephant

Elephant’s tusk is one of the most valued possessions in anybody's home or office. The reason for its huge demand is not due to its strength or colour or style but due to the simple fact that, it comes from the biggest living land animal. Can't we replace small statues made out of ivory with some plastic or terracotta items? Yes, we can; but we won’t do. In addition to that, people are ready to pay sky high prices to join the massacre (directly or indirectly) to get a piece of that poor animal’s teeth.

192 Elephant Carcass!!!

In these days, when numerous human beings are getting killed or raped every day, finding one or two elephant carcass hardly matter. But 192 of them are shocking!!! As per WWF report (results accumulated from an aerial survey), "117 were in Kenya and 75 in Tanzania. More shocking is that of all the carcasses found in Kenya, 84 per cent were outside of the Masai Mara National Reserve, and each had its tusks missing."

It’s time to stop this blood bath in the reserves of Africa. Governments of many Asian countries have to implement strict ban on imports of body parts of endangered species. When demand resides considerably supply will also reduce.

Positive Signs

At the same time, there are some rays of hope in the horizon. As per the report, “general results for this census show an increasing trend of elephants and buffaloes in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem where the number of elephants counted shows an increasing trend from 2,058 in 1986 to 7,535 individuals in 2014. There was also an increase in buffalo population in the area, from 54,979 (in 1986) to 61,896 individuals (in 2014)”

Congrats to all those who tried to give their all-out effort for conservation.

Way forward

Even though the numbers shows an increasing trend this is not the time to relax, especially after discovering 192 carcasses. We need to focus more on anti-poaching process and conservation of habitat.

As WWF article suggests, “acquiring anti-poaching equipment and technology, engaging communities and private sector in anti-poaching campaigns, carrying out elephant censuses, working with communities to reduce human wildlife conflict, securing elephant range outside protected areas, monitoring threats and developing national and sub-regional databases for use in managing elephant and rhino populations” are very much important for the very survival of this majestic animal in African forests. Same rule is applicable for India as well.

Sajeev

1. Massive loss of elephants in the Mara Serengeti ecosystem concerns conservationists - WWF