SAVING THE ELEPHANTS FROM EXTINCTION BY POACHERS

Two veterinarians offer to help poachers get ivory without killing the pachyderms

By Ima Schmuck

The Unconventional Gazette / December 31, 2012

The Unconventional Gazette has obtained an exclusive interview with Drs. Annette Brunhilde and Miriam Finkelstein, two dental veterinarians that have a plan to save the elephants from extinction by poachers.

The San Francisco vets plan to go to the African countries of Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic where an estimated 25,000 elephants are slaughtered for their ivory every year. The elephants are either shot or hacked to death by gangs of poachers who use chain saws to remove the tusks of the slain creatures.

Brunhilde and Finkelstein told us that they have a unique plan by which they will help poachers to obtain the much sought after ivory without killing the elephants. They plan to organize and train a cadre of ‘tranquilizing squads’ that will accompany poachers and instead of shooting the elephants to death, they will shoot tranquilizing darts that will enable the poachers to remove the tusks without any other harm to the animals.

The two dental vets have already met with Gabon President Ali-Ben Bongo and obtained his approval for the plan. They will start their program in Gabon before approaching the presidents of the other African nations to obtain their approval as well.

President Bongo stated that it was far better for the elephants to lose their tusks than to lose their lives.

The plan calls for several ways of contacting poachers and offering to accompany them on their illegal elephant hunts provided that the tranquilizing squad members are allowed to dart the elephants in order to keep them from being killed.

President Bongo has promised that the poachers will not be prosecuted when they take part in nonlethal hunts and he will allow them to sell any ivory they obtain using this humane method.

Drs. Brunhilde and Finkelstein are optimistic that if their plan works in Gabon, President Joseph Kabila Kabange of the Congo and Central African Republic President François Bozizé Yangouvonda will follow Bongo’s lead in adopting their plan to save the elephants from extinction.

When asked about the UN global ban on ivory trading that took effect in 1989, the two vets said that the ban will be revised in Bangkok next March to allow resumption in trading, but only from existing ivory stocks gathered from elephants that have died as a result of natural causes. Brunhilde and Finkelstein said that trade in the ivory gathered by poachers from tranquilized elephants will remain banned but that will be their problem. “Our only interest is in saving the elephants,” they said.