Year of the Elephant

Year+of+the+Elephant

Jade Lejeune, author

In 2016, a new hashtag has been seen on social media, and a lot of people have shared it so far. The #JoinTheHerd encourages the amazing people who are trying to stop the elephants slaughter and the ivory trade. Celebrities and famous figures are sharing the hashtag to get people to stop buying ivory products. If the users knew where this opaque substance came from, would they still buy it?

The ivory comes from the tusks of elephants and that’s why they are killed. It’s a hard substance that is use for jewelry, ornaments, carvings, chopsticks, and other accessories that are in demand. In Asia, Hong Kong is the most important trading center. New markets are opening because there’s a lot of demand. The good news is that in 2015, United States and China have decided to take actions and stop the sales of ivory on their territory. Still, 33,000 elephants are killed every year. It’s an incredible number and if the kills continue to increase, this species will become extinct. Elephants have been the victims of poachers for a long time. They still haven’t had time to recover from the last ivory crisis in the 80’s. 700,000 elephants died during this decade for economical reasons, and the same thing is happening right now.

But the cause is still not lost. An organism named WildAid is trying to stop the illegal trade of wildlife animals and stop the ivory trade. They have started a campaign with slogans like : “When The Buying Stops, The Killing Can Too’’.  A lot of celebrity are promoting this project which brings a lot of visibility to the organism and touches more people every day. Everybody can contribute and make a difference by sharing the hashtag “#JoinTheHerd ” ,or visiting the https://www.yearoftheelephant.org/ web site to create your own picture . ‘’I join the herd, My name is…’’. Famous people like Ian Somerhalder, Nikki Reed, Lupita Nyong’o, Maggie Q ,and more have joined the herd. Other organizations are partners of WildAid like, Animal Planet, African WildLife Foundation and Save The Elephants. The more people support this amazing species, the more convincing we will be to business selling ivory products. This beautiful creature deserves to live, not be killed. This year is the first year of the elephant, why not making it the year where all this stops.

http://www.awf.org/

https://www.yearoftheelephant.org/

http://wildaid.org/about-wildaid