An Open Letter to Greg Sheehan Reinstate the Ivory Ban

Dear Mr. Sheehan,

I am deeply dismayed by the news today that your department has reversed a ban on the import of ivory and other elephant trophies in the United States from Zimbabwe and Zambia.  

Americans are deeply opposed to this ban reversal, and their case is much better supported than the case put together by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  

In fact, 98% of all U.S. citizens oppose laws which support the import of ivory into the United States.  

As principal deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I urge you to resist and reverse this indefensible action by this administration.

Here are the reasons:

The Way we Protect Iconic Species Matters

Animal rights are as old as civilization, and these moral laws against cruelty toward animals is especially strong among Americans.  We give about $11 billion a year to environmental and animal charities, and in a 2015 Gallup poll only 3 percent of Americans said animals need little protection “since they are just animals.”  

But Americans draw a moral line in the sand with large, sentient mammals.  We agree that killing great apes, cetaceans and large iconic keystone mammals like elephants and rhinos is indefensible from a moral standpoint.

While your department has argued that the sport killing of elephants will help conservation efforts, this argument ignores the fact that Americans find the sport killing of these intelligent, sentient animals morally repugnant.

Here is an analogy. If the Trump Administration argued that the sport killing of Blue Whales or Chimpanzees would help promote their conservation, would we support laws that promoted those killings?

Of course not, for one because there are better alternatives to their conservation, and second because we have strong moral convictions about the killing of these sentient mammals that forbids us from making the case for their killing.

This leads to a very important point. If all the Polar Bears, Hyacinth Macaws, tigers, pandas and elephants died tomorrow, the world would go on, although it would be a diminished one.

But we live in a world where we are actually fighting to protect the very biodiversity that keeps our world and atmosphere functioning in a way that can support our biosphere and our global economies. We are in a fight for the survival of our coccolithophores, the foraminifera, the tiny crustaceans and molluscs, the fabric of biodiversity upon which civilization rests.

In this world threatened by complex issues like ocean acidification and climate change, the way we protect our elephants, tigers, pandas, macaws and polar bears matters, a lot. The finite set of species which inhabit our idea of nature and help inspire people to conserve are important particularly in this way. They are what turns our children into environmentalists and make people more interested in the bigger ecological issues we face.

The notion that Donald Trump Jr. posing with a knife and the severed tail of an elephant he shot on a 2010 hunt in Zimbabwe is not the image we should present to the world as the face of conservation. The conservation of iconic keystone species like elephants is the public face of conservation at large. The American face of conservation should resemble Jane Goodall, not cowardly Walter Palmer.

All Genuine Conservation Involves Locals

The idea of tying a game exclusive only to the foreign ultra-wealthy, and presenting that to Africans as a solution to conservation is troublesome. In mainstream, modern conservation efforts around the world, incorporating the local community is central to successful conservation. Americans can support international conservation efforts on other continents, but we do not dictate them to others.

Trophy hunting takes the local community out of the solution almost entirely, as the industry creates few jobs for local people. In fact, proponents of trophy hunting argue that trophy hunting fees go to help the local community and the conservation of the elephants themselves. But this is actually not happening in countries that allow trophy hunting of elephants. The money that is supposed to go into the local community ends up being siphoned off to bureaucrats and safari clubs.

In many cases, investigations have revealed that the intended beneficiaries of trophy hunting fees never get a penny of the proceeds. This helps explain why elephant populations are declining.

Elephant Populations are Declining in Countries that Support Elephant Hunting

Across Africa, savanna elephants have been plummeting. The Great Elephant Census found about 144,000 fewer between 2007 and 2014, and from 2010 to 2014 their numbers fell by 8% a year. Habitat loss plays a part, but the main cause is poaching for ivory. The reason? The demand for ivory. Even though 98% of all Americans are against the import of ivory into the United States, China has long been the world’s largest ivory market, and the United States has been among the largest. As the supply of ivory declines, the value increases. Those who collect and trade ivory understand that as global supplies dwindle, the value of their collection skyrockets.

It is the very people who this law was designed for — ultra-wealthy trophy hunters and ivory collectors — who are the primary cause of elephant declines in the first place.

Laws which Encourage the Trade of Ivory are Indefensible

Because the ivory trade is the primary reason for the rapid decline of elephants throughout Africa, promoting legislation which expands or supports that trade directly contributes to the decline of elephants.

The international trade of ivory was banned in 1989, and that ban was a high point in conservation of elephants, as it helped to shut down global ivory markets and created the hugely successful global perception that owning ivory was illicit and immoral.

Laws which champion the trade of ivory directly subvert the authority of international bans on ivory.

The Claim that Hunting Elephants is an Important Conservation Tactic is False

According to a November 16, 2017 article in the Washington Post:

"...The hunting of elephants brings in very little revenue. A 2017 report by Economists at Large, an economic analysis firm based in Australia, found that in eight African countries, trophy hunting amounted to less than 1 percent of total tourism revenue and 0.03 percent of the countries' total gross national product. A 2015 National Geographic report found that only minimal amounts of revenue from game hunting actually trickled down to the communities managing elephant populations. Government corruption is a big factor in this, with authorities keeping hunting fees for themselves and seizing wildlife lands to profit from hunting and poaching."

The Washington Post then went on to cite data from your own department, showing the positive effects of banning trophies. Here are those records, and what has happened since:

Trophy Hunting Advocates Misrepresent the Value of Older Males to Herd Health

In a November 18, 2017 article for The Atlantic, author Virginia Morell argues that the trophy hunter advocates' talking point about the older males being of no value to the herd are not supported. A quote from the article:

From a population standpoint, "older male elephants are very important to the health and genetic vitality of a population," said Cynthia Moss, who has led the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya since 1972. While hunters in the past have used the belief that older males are reproductively senile as an argument for killing them for their ivory, research has revealed that they are in fact an elephant population's primary breeders. "By living to an older age, [older males show that] they have the traits for longevity and good health to pass on to their offspring," Moss said. "Killing these males compromises the next generation of the population."

There are Better Ways for the United States to Support African Elephant Conservation Efforts

There are three proven methods to protecting elephants, and they go hand in hand. To support elephant populations and the African habitats in which they live, Americans should focus on these three alternatives:

1. Efforts that result in the expansion of natural reserves in Subsaharan Africa.

2. wildlife and nature tourism in African countries.

3. Global Solidarity on Efforts to Shut Down the Ivory Trade.

Diverse forms of tourism to African countries that center around the preservation of habitat, landscape and wildlife, such as wildlife viewing, birdwatching, safari tourism, cultural tourism and food and wine tourism have been growing quickly, and they bring in far more money.

Other forms of tourism outweigh trophy hunting tourism revenue by leaps and bounds. For example, a 2006 paper in Biological Conservation estimated that at least 18,500 trophy hunters visit sub-Saharan Africa each year, spending about $201 million. By comparison, the region drew 33.8 million visitors in 2012, who spent $36 billion, according to World Bank estimates. Trophy hunting brings in roughly half of one percent of tourism revenue in sub-Saharan Africa.

International Park Reserves Are the Answer

This map sketch roughly shows the historical elephant distribution across Africa. Start with this goal: turn the historical elephant ranges into massive international parks. Focus on the increasing number of African tourists and international tourists who want to learn about the wildlife and culture of these beautiful countries.

Larger park reserves are the real answer to the long-term conservation of elephants and the habitats in which they live. Remember that habitat loss is the other reason elephant populations are declining! Focus on the expanding nature tourism economy, which include African tourists and African businesses which cater to them.

With strict nature corridors, buffers and mixed-use areas, imagine African efforts to return the historical elephant ranges to the highest level of protection possible.

This Map Shows the Protected Regions of Subsaharan Africa

This map, which I pieced together from the ProtectedPlanet data map, shows just how much Subsaharan Africa is protected. Lighter green indicates lower levels of protection. Pure kelly green represents strict nature reserves. Note that there are no strict nature reserves overlapping with elephant habitat.

I have overlaid the color orange to indicate roughly where elephant populations currently exist.

• Parks are fragmented.
• There is no solid kelly green overlapping elephant habitat, meaning that the level of protection in these parks is low or incomplete.
• Reserves often stop at country borders.
• There are not sufficient corridors that extend throughout these population ranges.