Where Can You Buy An Elephant
Only about 415,000 African elephants remain in the wild today, and every year poachers kill at least 20,000. The illegal ivory trade has links to organized crime syndicates that threaten local communities and promote corruption. And while the ivory for sale in shops such as this one, just off Des Voeux Road in central Hong Kong, may be legally sourced from existing government-controlled stockpiles, most of the new ivory for sale in the world is not.
where can you buy an elephant
Mainland China is the notable exception. The country, whose citizens generate most of the global demand for elephant ivory, outlawed the practice, with a ban on the sale of ivory taking effect on December 31, 2017. Conservationists celebrated the move as a milestone for curbing the illegal trade.
Making the Chinese ban a real turning point in the elephant poaching crisis means closing the remaining markets in Asia and stamping out consumer demand, says Cheryl Lo, wildlife crime manager for WWF-Hong Kong. So as WWF continues to work with other governments in the region to ban ivory sales, they are also focusing intently on the root of the problem: demand.
In a bid to successfully reduce elephant ivory demand, WWF is taking a new approach to ivory consumers. Past efforts have focused on raising awareness of the problem, urging people and companies not to buy or sell elephant ivory, and making people aware of the Chinese ban. WWF now wants to go deeper: to get inside the heads of consumers to figure out what drives their desire to buy ivory.
With a focus on Chinese travelers to Thailand, where elephant ivory is still openly for sale, the campaign will work with popular travel and fashion influencers, such as web celebrities, who will help share the message that ivory is no longer fashionable or a good holiday souvenir.
Laos has no room for error when it comes to these animals. We are living through the Sixth Extinction, Pinto reminds me, an era when humans are causing the loss of species at breakneck speed. Asian elephants epitomize this biodiversity free fall. A species that once roamed southern Asia from Turkey to eastern China now occupies 5 percent of that range and amounts to maybe 40,000 individuals in the wild. The main problem is habitat loss, along with a related phenomenon, human-elephant conflict. In India, such conflict annually causes 400 human fatalities and 100 elephant deaths. In Sri Lanka, the numbers are 70 and 200, respectively. In Bangladesh, when some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims arrived in late 2017 after fleeing genocidal violence in neighboring Myanmar, their refugee camps obliterated huge swaths of forest along a main migration route. The elephants responded by stampeding through the camps repeatedly and killing 14 people. Fortunately for the elephants, the Rohingya had no weapons.
Nobody knows when this culture began in Asia. Elephant capture started at least 4,500 years ago in the Indus Valley, where soapstone carvings of elephants in chains have been found. Care and training developed over centuries, with knowledge passed down from father to son. Traditionally, most Lao villages had at least one elephant for plowing and carrying firewood. Elephants became symbols of prestige across Asia, with kings using them as ceremonial mounts and offering them as gifts to seal political alliances. As the only men who could control these giants, mahouts gained prestige, becoming confidants to kings. But then the French colonized Southeast Asia in the late 19th century and introduced commercial logging, an industry made possible by elephant towing power. Mahouts began living in the jungle for long stretches. Their visibility faded, along with their status.
This morning, Pinto and I could use a shaman. After finding MBN grazing in the same spot as yesterday, we slosh up a stream to locate the other elephants, only to be blitzed by great armies of leeches. They inch up our boots and squirm beneath our socks. Noticing our anguish, one of the mahouts calmly slices off two segments of bamboo, fashions a couple of tubes, fills them with stream water, and adds a pinch of salt from his pack to each. He hands these to us, along with bits of vine to use as a sort of gauze. When we daub the leeches with the salt solution, they drop off.
To Ammann, the notion that elephants were being leased, not sold, was intriguing. Maybe this was the loophole through which buyers were sidestepping the law. Like the Soutchais, the Mekong Group had styled its elephant transactions as multiyear lease agreements, according to the Laotian elephant owners Ammann interviewed. But none of those owners possessed copies of the contracts, and Ammann sensed that none of them expected to get their elephants back. He could find no instances of Lao elephants ever returning from China.
This raises an interesting question. If Chinese zoos are leasing elephants from Laos, how can those elephants then be sold to another zoo? I had a hard time seeing how such an elephant would ever return to Laos.
Someone builds a bonfire in the parking lot and a conga line forms, lurching this way and that, skirting the flames, romping past the elephants. Trapped in the eye of this storm, Joumban and mae Seang press their faces against each other.
As for MBN, the outcast elephant, she began consistently hovering about 200 yards from the herd, moving in closer to interact with the others about once a week. In her own way, she had remained part of the group. The most striking development involved the wild male. He had joined the herd for several weeks and taken a particular liking to Mae Khian. All in all, the signs suggested that these elephants were reverting back to their wild selves.
These are rare and unusual pieces of elephant art created by our most talented elephant artists. Pulled from our Gallery Collection, these paintings represent the ultimate unique expression of abstract art.
Created during private, scheduled settings, the Elephant Art Gallery team in Thailand works with the elephant artist during the creation of these very special works of art. These are our highest quality paintings, using only the best paints and handmade papers.
An inexpensive route to purchase and collect great original abstract elephant paintings. These paintings are created by the elephants in a less formal environment. These are on card stock and a crowd favorite.
Having an elephant as a pet is a very difficult thing to do, the reason for this is that most countries require a special permit and special enclosures and certificates for the keeping of exotic species. In addition, most species of elephants are currently endangered due to the treacherous ivory trade as well as habitation destruction. In the UK it is utterly illegal to keep elephants as pets in any capacity. In the United States this is also true unless you own special grounds, such as an animal shelter or conservation center, have a zoo or own a circus. Conversely, in Asia and Africa elephants are often kept and used for labor or as pets since the keeping of animals is far less regulated in places like India and Africa.
There are currently only two basic, recognized species of elephants, the African Elephant and the Asian Elephant. All species are herbivores and like to be near water often. Elephants are most commonly found in wide open plains, marsh land, forests and some deserts.
Elephants are highly intelligent creatures and do make very good companions, interacting with humans and being able to be trained fairly easily, if one, of course, knows what one is doing. However, before you consider purchasing an elephant you should ensure that you have the necessary grounds for them, they can not live properly in cramped cages or in shuttered barns. In addition to this, elephants are also very expensive, their diet is huge, their care and veterinary bills will be enormous and they can cause a great deal of damage under certain circumstances. Below will be a break down of the pros, cons and specifics of owning a elephant as a pet in no particular order.
Cons of Keeping a Elephant as a Pet: Price is one of the main problems with elephants with monthly rates for their upkeep often well in excess of $7000. Some of the reasons for this is that elephants are very large and thus require a great deal of food per day. Elephants are also very rare so actually just obtaining one, even if you have the money for it, is no easy task. Male bull elephants when mating become very hostile and dangerous and can rampage. Female mother elephants with their offspring can be very protective and just as dangerous as a male if they think their calf is in danger. Elephants grow to about 13 feet tall, weighing about 15,000 pounds, because of this they can cause very extensive physical and property damage, in the wild they can easily and often push over full grown trees to get at the root, that being said they can smash through most traditional fences with ease.
All elephants are herbivores so one needn't worry about much else in their diet. Elephants spend about sixteen hours a day doing nothing but eating and have very large appetites. The type of diet a particular elephant has and maintains in the wild will vary markedly with their surroundings. In the wild elephants eat bark, leaves, fruits and vegetables. Often when in captivity elephants will do well on a diet of branches, hay, leaves, grass, fruits and vegetables, often with nutritional supplements added.
The temperature should ideally be controlled and similar to the elephant or elephants initial climate. The enclosure should also be strong enough to ensure that the animal can not break out, so something that is resistant to about 15,000 pounds of force. In addition to being spacious so that earth is not hard packed from the elephants repeated traversing, for if it does this can lead to foot issues with the animal later down the line. There should also be a sizable area of water and an area for mud bathing, as well as a grassy pasture for grazing and leafy trees. Hard floors, such as concrete or similar substances should be avoided as this may lead to health problems for the animal given how long they stand on their feet. This is one reason why elephants in captivity often develop health problems never observed in their wild counterparts. Elephants have a limited ability to adapt to temperature changes, the more drastic and quick the change the less likely they will adapt, as with most other animals. However, elephants are very susceptible to cold weather and should always be closely monitored when the weather drops below about 40 degrees, since, upon becoming chilled, will lack the energy to warm themselves up again. This is especially true of their legs which can suffer severe and irreparable damage if left in the cold for extended periods of time. 041b061a72