Our Main Message
Virtue signalling is becoming a bigger threat to elephants than poaching.
Animal Rights groups and their NGO partners are playing upon people's empathy for elephants with wildly exaggerated claims about threats to elephants. There are well over 350,000 wild elephants in Africa, and the United States has successfully kept raw ivory from recently killed elephants out of our country since the 1990s. Even so, irrational ivory bans spreading in the US steal the value of legally imported and historically significant items made with ivory without helping a single African elephant.
Even worse, ivory bans hurt elephant populations. By stripping elephants of commercial value, local African communities have no incentives to protect and grow elephant populations. Typical adult African elephants weigh over 8 tons, eat 200-600 pounds of food a day, and drink 50 gallons of water a day. They can destroy subsistence farms, cause substantial property damage, and ruin habitats when those habitats can't support large numbers of elephants. Elephants also kill around 500 people per year. If there is no commercial benefit to local communities who host these animals, then it is no surprise that locals look the other way, or worse yet encourage, elephant poaching.
Next Steps...
We can't continue our work without your support. The Elephant Protection Association is a 501(c)(4) organization, and donations are not tax deductible.