31 October 2008
editorial
Johannesburg — NAMIBIA's ban on the media and observers from an ivory auction sanctioned by the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) is indicative of the obfuscation and hypocrisy surrounding elephant conservation and exploitation.
An issue that arouses such strong emotions needs to be handled with the utmost transparency. The exploitation of elephants and other endangered species brings disparate human value systems into conflict at such a fundamental level that no degree of reasoning is likely to satisfy everyone.
What everyone needs to accept is that the desirability of exploiting elephants is a human concern. The fact is that humans have transformed, and will continue to transform, the planet. One of the consequences is that humans and elephants will compete for habitat, but in that inevitable contest, humanity is obliged to choose the interests of people. But what are humanity's interests?
It has become a conservationist axiom that it is environmentally imperative for humans to maintain the highest possible degree of biodiversity; our own survival as a species depends on that.
Elephants play an important role in maintaining biodiversity, but no greater than, say, nematodes, which few potato farmers would hesitate to exterminate. Yet, the extinction of soil organisms may well be a greater threat to humanity than the loss of all Africa's elephants.
When we argue about elephant conservation, it is important to remain rational. Elephants may have had a role in raising conservation consciousness, but that does not mean their population should be permitted to grow at the expense of other species.
No good, however, will come from tucking the auctions away under a guilty blanket. If there is to be trade in ivory, those who participate and those who oppose it must be exposed to the other's point of view.
Only that way will humans stand any chance of discovering what is really in their best interest.
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The husk of my heart.
In the heaven, near a beautiful clapping, I hear a voice: a spirit appears in the shade of a Chapel and everything shines on the side of your darkness.
Francesco Sinibaldi