Image: Elephants bathing at Kruger Park (2008) © G. Nienaber
Kruger is not the only park with stockpiles of ivory recovered from elephants. In fact, one to five tons of ivory a year pile up in warehouses of the parks' departments of a dozen African countries; Zimbabwe alone adds ten. There is little agreement about what should be done with this ivory fortune. But as long as there are elephants this mountain of tusks will continue to grow.
Walker does not shy away from declaring that the demand for ivory is never going to disappear. It has been prized since the Paleolithic era, but this demand "need not be the elephant's curse."
Walker's book makes a compelling case for the tightly controlled export of ivory from Africa. He takes on animal rights groups that have fought CITES-supervised ivory sales and urges that we all need to assure the future of the people of Africa as well as the elephant. After all, it is their resource.
Ivory's Ghosts is certainly not the end of the story, but unless something is done, the world may face the end of the elephant. Walker maintains a blog where he makes a controversial case regarding legal ivory sales.
The idea that any legal ivory sales will surely encourage poaching is the mantra of anti-ivory campaigners (and widely repeated in the media), but on examination it just doesn't stand up. It's very hard to prove a causal connection between the two, as serious researchers have discovered. TRAFFIC, the joint World Wildlife Fund / IUCN wildlife trade monitoring network, says there's no hard evidence that these sales will lead to more poaching or increased illegal trade in ivory.
In fact, legal sales may help suppress poaching. CITES expects the recent sale of tusks, at which legitimate ivory reached $152 per kilogram, to undercut black market ivory, which was said to be going for up to $800 a kilogram -- and it's those inflated prices that provide the primary incentive for poaching in countries suffering from poverty and corruption.
Whether you agree with this approach to conservation or not, read Ivory's Ghosts if you have any affinity for the history and future of this magnificent animal that has been sacrificed over the ages for what amounts to the white gold of its teeth.
Finally, Walker takes a hard look at the fact that while Africa boasts pristine, successful game parks like Kruger, there are many areas on the continent where elephants are not only the victims of poaching, but where chaotic climate conditions bring drought -- a grim reaper that decimates the once great herds.
Add to that scenario the problems created by knee jerk reactions of animal rights groups and "conservationists" who do not want to see any elephant culled, even if the animal is tramping villagers and decimating crops. Africa deserves the right to manage its own wildlife.
This book is a provocative, fascinating and compelling read. Highly recommended.
John Frederick Walker is a journalist, conservationist, and artist. His writing on a wide variety of subjects, from adventure travel to wine, has appeared in a number of publications, including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Wildlife Conservation, and Saveur. He is the author of two books on natural history, Ivory's Ghosts and A Certain Curve of Horn.
Walker has been traveling in, and reporting on, Africa since 1986, when he first became involved with endangered species conservation.
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