Elephants
To meet the demand for ivory, an elephant is killed every 15 minutes in Africa, or 100 elephants a day. For its ivory tusks. Every fifteen minutes! Unimaginable. Between 2014 and 2017, more than 100,000 elephants were poached.
If we don't act now to stop poaching, the elephant in Central Africa will be extinct in a few decades. And that just for its tusks.... Unimaginable.
Billiard balls made of ivory. Tusks are extremely developed incisors. They never stop growing, are partially hollow but super strong. Traders make piano keys, billiard balls and extremely expensive figurines from ivory. In Asian countries, you pay between $400 and $600 on the black market for a kilo of ivory. In Africa, the price is much lower (around $100 per kilo) because the ivory comes from that continent and there are fewer transportation and smuggling costs.
Zambezi the orphan elephant. I really am a fan of elephants. And one in particular: Zambezi. I met the, then still, baby elephant during the filming of my program 'Freek in the wild'. I worked for a few days as a caretaker in an elephant orphanage in Zambia. From the moment Zambezi stuck his trunk in my mouth and blew some warm air inside, I was sold!
Doomed. Little Zambezi, then just a year old, was found on the banks of the Zambezi River. He was starving, dehydrated and confused. Baby elephants without a herd are doomed in the wilderness. They have no protection from predators and they cannot yet use their trunks. Zambezi's family had been killed by poachers. The little orphan had survived that attack, but without the help of the people at the orphanage, he would never have made it.
Isilo the celebrity. And then that time I came face to face with Isilo. A celebrity because he had the largest tusks in all of Southern Africa. Hád yes, because Isilo has since died, but fortunately not by poachers but by old age. I will never forget the feeling that came over me when this giant stood so close that I could just smell him! That makes an impression.
