Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/zimbabweelephants/
The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. has reported that baby elephants, between the ages of 2 and 5, are regularly being abducted from Hwange National Park. The elephants are then shipped to China to perform circus-like acts for the public.
Humane Society International (HSI) sources witnessed the elephants being removed in army trucks, and said Zimparks staff on the scene had their mobile phones confiscated, in order to stop news of the shipment getting out, The Independent reports.
As justification, Zimbabwean lawmakers claim the elephants are disturbing their neighbors, eating too much food while the country suffers through drought, and are a threat to the economy, ABC reports. To rectify these apparently horrendous crimes, the government has decided to sell the elephant calves into slavery — to live out the rest of their lives as objects of entertainment.
The elephants airlifted to parks in China and Dubai in recent years were sold for prices ranging from $13,500 to $41,500 each,” CNN reports, a small price for the lives of some of the most caring sentient beings on the planet.
The forest-dwelling and savannah elephants of Africa are still classified as a single species by the IUCN — despite evidence suggesting they are genetically distinct. These shipments of elephants to China are further in defiance of the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), out of which came a near total ban on live elephant exports from Zimbabwe and Botswana to zoos, Humane Society International.
Click below and tell the CITES Secretary-General to end this inhumane trade until the IUCN has re-evaluated the species status of African elephants.
Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog
