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- Title
TROPHY HUNTERS, GLOBAL SADISM AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: NOT EVEN THE ELEPHANTS ARE SAFE.
- Authors
DILLON, SARA
- Abstract
Things are not getting better for the remaining elephants of the world. In Africa, where most live, some fifty percent have been lost to poaching over the past decade. Some conservationists predict that in another 10-20 years, the wild elephants will be gone completely. One hundred elephants are still being killed by poachers every day. There are a mere half million elephants or so left in Africa, and around 40,000 in Asia. And yet, national governments in countries that are home to the elephants, encouraged by international trophy hunting interest, still clamor for more to be killed. This article makes the argument that the nature of elephants and other megafauna demands nothing less than a complete ban on hunting them. They are not creatures available to be slaughtered. The article notes that with the Trump administration, trophy hunting has experienced a resurgence. The argument presented in this article is that nothing less than an unequivocal, unambiguous ban on the hunting of endangered megafauna will be in any way effective. If we do not completely change our approach to the elephant, the elephant will at some point in the not distant future cease to exist in the wild. The article calls for an Endangered Species Treaty and an Elephant Protocol to go with it, as unlikely as it is that such a treaty would gain broad acceptance in the current anti-environmental climate. Along with treaty fatigue and deep skepticism about the effectiveness of international law generally, many African countries are resisting even the modest demands of the CITES Convention and threatening to pull out. This article makes the claim that every country and region needs to live up to the obligations of species stewardship, however inconvenient and however burdensome. Elephants cannot be the victims of the fact that human beings have not found better ways to achieve equitable development and good governance. Killing more elephants will most assuredly not lead to such a result.
- Subjects
CONSERVATIONISTS; ELEPHANTS; POACHERS; ANTI-environmentalism; INTERNATIONAL law
- Publication
Boston University International Law Journal, 2020, Vol 38, Issue 2, p322
- ISSN
0737-8947
- Publication type
Article