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Reasons For Ivory Phoaching

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Ivory poaching is the main reason why elephants are being heavily hunted. However; even though it is illegal in many countries, poachers still manage to supply the illegal ivory trade. According to National Geographic, every year the elephants population decreases by 8 percent. This is about 27,000 elephants slaughtered by poachers year after year. In order to help stop the declining of the elephants population, in 1989 CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) put in place a global ban on ivory trading that significantly stopped poaching at first, but twice since then, in 1999 and 2008, some southern African countries were allowed to sell ivory from their stockpiles. These sales widely believed to have boosted ivory demand in Asia and stimulated poaching and ivory smuggling. Despite being banned, ivory poachers still manage to illegally sell the elephants tusks all around the country. There are many ways and reasons as to why poachers kill elephants for their ivory tusks. According to EleAid, elephants have two tusks that grow continuously throughout their lives. They use their tusks for a variety of tasks such as defense, digging, lifting objects, gathering food, and stripping bark to eat from trees. These tusks are in embedded within the skull of the animal which this part is a pulpy cavity that contains nerves, tissue, and blood vessels; however, it is also ivory. In order to remove this section, the tooth must be carved out of the skull; thus,

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