Activism: petition targets Chinese officials regarding African poaching “due to the demand of ivory and rhino horns by Chinese citizens”
Note: mongabay.com does not endorse the action below, but believes its readers may be interested in taking action or discussing the issue in comments.
African elephant (Acinonyx jubatus) infant in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.
The organization SOS Elephants of Chad has released a petition urging the Chinese government to tackle the illegal ivory and rhino horn trade as a new article in the Global Post reports: “The growing appetite for ivory in Asia, coupled with the increasing influence of China in countries across central and southern parts of Africa, has led to more elephants being killed for their ivory tusks.”
According to the petition by SOS Elephants: “We want the Chinese authorities to take action against these killings immediately and ask the Chinese Government to set a complete ban on the import and the purchase of ivory. We want the Chinese people to know that all the ivory which they have purchased within the last 10 years has mainly been obtained from illegal killings of elephants ! This is the only way to help and save the African elephants and rhinos.”
SOS Elephant’s petition: Stop killing African elephants for illegal ivory trade!.
For more information on SOS Elephants:
A nation of tragedies: the unseen elephant wars of Chad
(05/12/2010) Stephanie Vergniault, head of SOS Elephants in Chad, says she has seen more beheaded corpses of elephants in her life than living animals. In the central African nation, against the backdrop of a vast human tragedy—poverty, hunger, violence, and hundreds of thousands of refugees—elephants are quietly vanishing at an astounding rate. One-by-one they fall to well-organized, well-funded, and heavily-armed poaching militias. Soon Stephanie Vergniault believes there may be no elephants left. A lawyer, screenwriter, and conservationist, Vergniault is a true Renaissance-woman. She first came to Chad to work with the government on electoral assistance, but in 2009 after seeing the dire situation of the nation’s elephants she created SOS Elephants, an organization determined to save these animals from local extinction.
