Elephants are highly intelligent and loving, social creatures. So, when people remove a poor little vulnerable calf from its natural surroundings and sentence him to a life in captivity, well, that’s just plain cruel. Thankfully, a convention in Geneva, Switzerland, has successfully won the vote in favor of putting an end to this animal cruelty.
Representatives from over 180 countries joined together at the 18th meeting of CITES, (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to resolve the extinction crisis by re-assessing regulations on wildlife trade. After a heated debate, the member countries finally approved the decision to impose a near-total ban on sending African elephants captured from the wild and sent to the zoos, after a revision by the European Union (EU) included some exceptions to the ban.
Zimbabwe was not a fan of the ban and tried to block the vote in vain. Maybe that’s because along with Botswana the two countries are main providers of wild African elephants to zoos outside the continent. In fact, Zimbabwe has captured and exported over 100 baby elephants to Chinese zoos since 2012.
Elephant biologist Audrey Delsink, wildlife director from Humane Society International (HSI) Africa, said:
Calves suffer psychological and physical harm when taken from their mothers. Zoos and other captive facilities force these calves to live in an unnatural, unhealthy environment that does not meet their complex needs.
Elephants in western, central and eastern Africa are in short supply, thus trade in the creatures has long been banned. However, some trade has been permitted in southern Africa where elephant populations are healthier and thriving.
During the first committee vote in August, the EU had been unable to cast it’s 28 votes and started to hint that it might as well join the US and others that were flatly opposing the ban. This prompted outcry and rage among many public figures such as Pamela Anderson, Jane Goodall and Brigitte Bardot. The celebrities sent letters to the commission chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, asking the EU to back the ban.
Finally, the EU stepped up to the plate and drafted an amended text, saying the elephants should remain in their “natural and historical range in Africa, except in exceptional circumstances where it is considered that a transfer to ex-situ locations will provide demonstrable in-situ conservation benefits for African elephants”. If such a circumstance should occur, all decisions should be made in consultation with the CITES animals committee, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature elephant specialist group.
