Legacy Dilemmas

What do we do when times change and the heirlooms that were once prized have fallen, not just out of fashion, but out of legality? In the wake of more and more countries banning the trade in ivory, what is the burden of family legacy?

We were cleaning out the attic of our house the other day, and we came upon a hand-embroidered red cloth bundle. It was among several items inherited from my husband’s grandmother, who passed away a while ago at the age of 105. Born in 1898, she left behind a house full of family treasures.

Somehow, this bundle had escaped our notice when we unpacked the boxes. We unwrapped the thick felt cloth, and found a set of knives with ivory handles. An ornate ivory-handled cake server was in another cloth. A further cloth bundle held a set of ebony-handled knives.

Ivory handled knife set banned

An inherited set of vintage ivory handled knives and cake server.
Photo: PKR

The pieces are all beautifully wrought and look like they are probably from the early part of the 20th century. The ivory and ebony are both smooth, light, and warm once held for a moment.

They also come from species we have exploited into endangered status. The trade in ivory and ivory products was recently banned in the United Kingdom and in China. This includes ivory that has been considered ‘legal’ for sale – which means it was harvested (a rather benign word) prior to 1976, when trade came under the restrictions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Meanwhile, the European Union considers taking similar steps.

Legal loopholes allow trade to continue – the total bans in the UK and China are a first step in shutting down any avenue for the sale of new ivory (i.e. taken from illegally poached elephants) under the guise of antique ivory, like the tableware we inherited, but the United States has started to roll back recent restrictions to allow more trade in endangered animal parts, including ivory. As one of the world’s main ivory markets, it matters.

Similar restrictions apply to the ebony knives, which is less controlled than ivory – maybe because many of the Diospyros genus of trees are less well-known than elephants.

I hold the ivory handles and think of the elephants I saw in South Africa – young ones defying our Jeep in youthful bravado, older ones munching tree branches while watchfully eyeing our passage. They are all potential victims of poachers looking to sell their tusks to make unnecessary objects like these knives.

I mean…of course the knives are beautiful to look at and to hold. They come from amazing materials taken from amazing and unique species. When they were manufactured and purchased, no one thought twice about owning luxury items from animals and trees that were still in abundance.

I can’t imagine putting them out on the table and using them to eat. It’s a modern dilemma to consider what should be done with the family legacies of exploitation in the form of flatware and trinkets. Do we pass them along to other family members? Do we destroy them? I don’t know.

For now, they will stay in their old red bundle and remain an action that still has to be taken.

 

 

The Mirror Test – International World Wildlife Day

Numerous studies on various animals have surprised and delighted human observers by demonstrating that some animals are much more intelligent and self-aware than previously thought.

If over the centuries or millennia we humans were able to persuade ourselves that we were alone in being self-aware, intelligent and moral, those haughty self-assessments have given way to a reluctant acknowledgement: While other creatures on the planet may not be quite as dizzyingly verbal, deft or introspective as we consider ourselves, they nonetheless meet the criteria for being sentient.

Path of Life Artist: MC Escher

Path of Life
Artist: MC Escher

A recent study furthered this realization with examples of just how very smart elephants are, and even plants have a kind of sentience that is just starting to reveal itself. We are all a part of the same fabric.

One study after another has shown that the very animals we have hunted almost into extinction, whom we are loathe to offer the same respect we would offer a house pet, are among the most empathetic creatures alive, our close cousins in feeling. Elephants, chimpanzees, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, magpies – all of them pass the so-called Mirror Test.

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

The Mirror Test is a means of evaluating whether an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror, and is used to indicate whether a non-human animals possesses self-awareness.

This very first International World Wildlife Day (WWD), proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly to mark the March 3 anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), is meant to raise awareness of endangered species around the world.

I’d like to call attention to the literal awareness of our fellow creatures. The sentience of animals, whether we understand it or not, is as important and mysterious as our own. Do we pass the real Mirror Test – that we can mirror the life we value for ourselves in how we treat our fellow creatures?wwd_e#WWD

Breaking the Chain

International Wildlife Trade summit logo Via: Helping Rhinos

London Summit on International Wildlife Trade
Via: Helping Rhinos

When it comes to putting a stop to the illegal trade in endangered animals and animal parts, I don’t know if the London Summit on Illegal Wildlife Trade is the first major conference to explicitly include the main consumer nations of animal parts as well as the countries in which the most animals are poached.

But I can say this: It’s a good start.

Like any deadly addiction, this must be tackled at all points along the market chain.

Crushed ivory is seen before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crushed an additional 6 tons of confiscated ivory in Denver, Colorado November 14, 2013 Photo: Reuters

Crushed ivory
Photo: Reuters

Follow #endwildlifecrime or #IWTconf on Twitter.

Thank you, Dr. Mandela

One of the many legacies left behind by the great Nelson Mandela will be his attention to conservation issues and his awareness of the role these issues play in society. In honor of his life, I thought I would highlight one of his many laudable projects today, one that brought together the dual challenges of conservation and peace.

Dr. Nelson Mandela, who passed away on 6 December 2013, was a founding member of the Peace Parks Foundation, together with Dr Anton Rupert and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

In Dr. Mandela’s words: “I know of no political movement, no philosophy, no ideology, which does not agree with the peace parks concept as we see it going into fruition today. It is a concept that can be embraced by all.

“In a world beset by conflicts and division, peace is one of the cornerstones of the future. Peace parks are a building block in this process, not only in our region, but potentially in the entire world.”

Nelson Mandela opens a gate between South Africa and Mozambique, creating a corridor for elephants to freely cross transnational boundaries. Photo: Tony Weaver / PPF

Nelson Mandela opens a gate between South Africa and Mozambique to allow elephants to be moved from South Africa’s Kruger National Park to a protected area in Limpopo National Park..
Photo: Tony Weaver / PPF

Peace parks are also known as transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs). The Southern African Development Community(SADC) Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement of 1999 defines a TFCA as “the area or component of a large ecological region that straddles the boundaries of two or more countries, encompassing one or more protected areas as well as multiple resource use areas”.

The Protocol commits the SADC Member States to promote the conservation of shared wildlife resources through the establishment of transfrontier conservation areas.

From the Peace Parks Foundation website: “The establishment and development of peace parks is a dynamic, exciting and multi-faceted approach to jointly manage natural resources across political boundaries.

“Peace parks are about co-existence between humans and nature, about promoting regional peace and stability, conserving biodiversity and stimulating job creation by developing nature conservation as a land-use option.”

Complex Bridging

Mobius Bridge design Source: NEXT

Möbius Bridge design
Source: NEXT

A new bridge project was announced in China this month, the Möbius Bridge. Designed by Dutch architecture firm NEXT, the complicated structure will span the Dragon King Harbor River in China’s Hunan Province.

NEXT describes the bridge as a “construction with the intersecting connections based on the principle of the Möbius ring,” which will “connect a diversity of routings on different heights.”

A different kind of bridge, the African Elephant Summit, was forged over the past few days in Gaborone, Botswana.

Convened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the government of Botswana, the summit ended with the successful signing of a list of 14 Urgent Measures to stem illegal poaching of elephants and the illegal international trade in elephant parts.

Highly prized African elephant (Loxodonta africana) tusks. © WWF-Canon / Martin Harvey

Highly prized African elephant (Loxodonta africana) tusks.
© WWF-Canon / Martin Harvey

The list includes Urgent Measure 6, which aims to “strengthen cooperation among law enforcement agencies in range, transit, and consumer states,” and indicates that this agreement bridges the states in which elephants are poached (among them Gabon, Kenya Niger and Zambia), the states known for ivory transit (Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia), and the states driving ivory demand (China, United States and Thailand).

IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefevre was quoted as saying, “We are very pleased with the result of the summit, especially as it involves some of the most important countries along the illegal ivory value chain.”

© WWF-Canon / Folke Wulf

© WWF-Canon / Folke Wulf

She continued, “We hope that these outcomes will go beyond the summit’s focus on African elephants and boost broader efforts to combat illegal wildlife trade in other species which have been threatened by it, such as rhinos and pangolins.”

It will have to be combined with efforts to reduce poverty, corruption and demand, the triad of drivers in the illegal elephant trade, but the international agreement forms what will hopefully be a strong, multi-level approach of getting from here to there.

Antithesis of Desire

There were two major seizures of illegal elephant tusks Kenya’s Mombasa airport this month. The largest – 3 tonnes worth an estimated $700,000 – was being exported as large bags of peanuts. The other, seized earlier this month, was composed of tusks that had been cut up into smaller pieces and covered in fish remains to pass as fish exports. The illegal animal parts trade, much like drug smuggling, is ever inventive when it comes to moving product.

Large-scale ivory shipments originating from Africa have almost exclusively been seized in containers at major ports in Asia, where there is an established customs inspection system. Shipments mainly originate from Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and West Africa. Graphic: Riccardo Pravettoni, GRID-Arendal via whyfiles.org

Large-scale ivory shipments originating from Africa have almost exclusively been seized in containers at major ports in Asia, where there is an established customs inspection system. Shipments mainly originate from Dar es Salaam, Mombasa and West Africa.
Graphic: Riccardo Pravettoni, GRID-Arendal via whyfiles.org

A new technique for identifying illegal elephant tusk products – ivory – has been under discussion. Carbon dating of living animals, based on radioactive fallout from atomic testing during the mid-20th century, could be used to determine whether ivory specimens are legal – i.e. were gathered during the still-legal era which overlapped with atomic testing – or are from a more recent culling and thus illegal.

A Kenyan official is quoted in this Washington Post article as saying that “unless wildlife poaching is declared ‘an economic crime’ with heavy penalties, the problem is likely to persist in Kenya and elsewhere in the region where poachers do not face serious consequences if they are caught.” This is an issue for national and international governmental regulation.

But with this, as with other illegal animal part markets from rhino horn to snakeskin, the real challenge is getting at the end consumer. The market for ivory had dropped dramatically during the 1990s, when the end consumers in North America and Europe had decided owning ivory was no longer acceptable. The market has risen again in Asia with newfound economic purchasing power.

There is also a very interesting piece from National Geographic linking the carving of religious sculptures, across all religions, in Asia with the illegal ivory trade. Reporter Bryan Christy suggests that if a moral and ethical argument could be made from within the various religions, that might go some way toward stemming the trade.

The elimination of a species, not to mention the blood trade in their parts, needs to come to be seen as the antithesis of what makes a desirable object.

Elephant Eye Artist: Kristan Benson

Elephant Eye
Artist: Kristan Benson

 

 

 

 

Farewell Forest Symphony

The fundamental chords that hold a symphony together aren’t always apparent to the untrained ear. The symphony of an ecosystem is often more complex than we comprehend.

A recent study draws a vital connection between elephant poaching, tree reproduction and forest ecosystems. Certain trees – in this case, large bush mango trees – have evolved alongside large animals, in this case, forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis). The trees have developed seeds which are best dispersed via elephants eating the seeds, walking long distances, and then depositing digested seeds far from the parent tree. The seeds of these trees are too large to be properly digested and dispersed by smaller mammals.

Unfortunately for both the wild trees and the elephants, up to 75% of the elephant population has been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where this study was carried out, and an estimated 60% of all forest elephants in the world have been killed in the service of the illegal ivory trade – all in the last ten years.

Sunset over the Congo rainforestPhoto: David Beaune via Mongabay.com

Sunset over the Congo rainforest
Photo: David Beaune via Mongabay.com

From an interview in an article on Mongabay.com:

“[The] Congo forest without elephants would certainly lose part of its soul, but elephant extinction with their seed dispersal services would also affect the entire plant community,” lead author David Beaune with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology told mongabay.com. Forest elephants are “important gardeners of the forest,” says Beaune, so important in fact that when elephants go extinct in a part of the forest, important trees are unable to reproduce. “If we can’t replace elephants, then the reproduction of these plant species is hugely compromised.”

The bush mango tree used in the study, Irvingia gabonensis, happens to be one that is also important to the economy of many African regions, and has been successfully cultivated. Its reproductive patterns are well-known. It plays a key role in preventing soil erosion as well as being useful as a cash crop.
What of the many other fruits and seeds eaten by forest elephants which are less-studied, with lesser known roles in the ecosystem? Without the massive ‘gardeners of the forest’, what aspects of the ecosystem will crumble?
It puts me in mind of the final movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, in which all the instruments disappear. There is a final song of the remaining violins, but it is thin and lonely without the other melodies.


More:

Original study in Forest Ecology and Management: Density-dependent effect affecting elephant seed-dispersed tree recruitment (Irvingia gabonensis) in Congo Forest by D., L. Bollache, B. Fruth, G. Hohmann1 and F. Bretagnolle

Mongabay.com article

Scientific American blog post

VOA news article – Ivory Poaching Decimates Forest Elephant Population