Why Elephants May Go Extinct in Your Lifetime | National Geographic

Elephants are in trouble. We lose about 100 elephants every day, some 30,000 elephants each year to poaching. There are still stores around the world that are selling ivory trinkets. We are looking at the extinction of a species simply because we have the sense that it is a wonderful gift to give or the social status that this elephant ivory penis will give you.

Well, the survey was a survey of the five largest consuming countries: China, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States. Most of the poached ivory lines up in either Asia or the U.S. One of the major ways that we're going to make a difference is by lessening the social status of ivory gift-giving.

You want to make purchasing ivory and owning ivory socially unacceptable. If we can begin to alter attitudes about how people think about ivory—that it isn't the perfect gift, that it doesn't impart happiness or a sense of well-being, that it doesn't indicate social status—then you can begin to suppress that demand.

You don't want to buy ivory; you think it's socially unacceptable. You then have a responsibility to tell your friends. That becomes your opportunity to educate people and explain to them why they should not buy ivory. If something doesn't happen quickly, we could be the generation that loses elephants.