According to Matt McGrath, writing in "Thailand's Promise to End Ivory Trade Cautiously Welcomed", ivory taken from Thai and African elephant is protected as soon as possible by the commitment form Miss Yingluck Shinawatra, prime minister of Thailand. However, many experts still wonder that this latest commitment can be used effectively to elephants and other endangered species or it will be only a theory.
According to history of Thailand, elephants are respective animals and great symbols of Thailand. Because of their size and gesture, many Thai ancestors relied on them in important situations, such as Thai-Burmese Wars, mysterious rites in Brahmanism, and international trade. For me, However, there are not only elephants in Thai forest, but other important species are found in the forest too. Schomburgk's deer, brow-antlered deer, tapir, and marbled cat are the example of preserved wildlife animals. However, these animals are threatened from hunters who need some parts of animals' body for trade and medicine.
Why did these animals are threatened? How do we can help to save their life? I think these two example questions are the basic questions that everyone should ask themselves. The probably answers for the first question is that they are hunted because people need some their organs for being collected in houses or offices, making energizing medicine, and hunting as a game. Nonetheless, many conservationists force the government to legislate the strict laws for animal conservation. For my country, Thailand, there are a lot of restrictions to not allow hunters for hunting wildlife animals. For instance, hunters cannot hunt in national parks, non-hunting areas, and open zoo, people who violate the law are imprisoned 4 years and fined less than 40000 Baht. In my perspective, many hunters still hunt and neglect the restriction, if they can sell the wildlife product to capitalist, they actually receive a lot of reward and they think the punishment is used to scare only, not used to punish.
From the news and McGrath's opinion, I feel grad and pleasure for legistration to ban ivory trade. This is quite significant problem that is neglected for long time. The government by Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra announces to legislate the rules to ban ivory from domesticated and African elephants. These is a big changing occasion to start legislating the act of legislation for other important endangered species. However, many international environmentalists and conservationists do not exactly believe that this restriction is effective enough or usable, since the legislation is unclear and more theoritical. For me, I believe it is the first step to persuate people to concentrate more on animal conservation and to look after the living wildlife animals.
Reference
McGrath, M. (2013, March 3). Thailand's promise to end ivory trade cautiously welcomed. BBC News Science & Environment. Retrieved March 8, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21646863
I wonder: Is a ban on ivory trading the best solution?
ReplyDeleteWhat about mahouts who own their elephants? If they want to sell the animal's tusks for a large profit, how could it be just to stop them doing that with their own property? And if the government does make laws to interfere in their free choice, mustn't the tax payers then pay the amount that such a law robs the mahout of?
As with the totally failing policy of making some drugs illegal, do laws that seem to unjustly interfere in human activity that does not harm other people do anything more than harm society by greatly increasing corruption and causing disrespect for the law.
ReplyDeleteJust as citizens, society and drug problems would all benefit greatly by making drugs such as heroin and yaa baa legal, might not society and even the elephants, rhino and so on benefit greatly by a different approach to the current ban-it-all failure?
Is it sensible to persist in a policy that is an obvious failure, especially when that failing policy is morally dubious? (Laws that make the sale and use of some recreational drugs illegal are certainly immoral, but I think that there are also good grounds for thinking that the currently popular animal conservation laws might be seriously unjust, too.)
Do you agree? Or do you have a reason to think I'm wrong?
I wonder if this policy will save the elephants's lives. I think that even though the government bans the legal trade of ivory, there is still illegal trade of it. As a result, this problem is not really solved.
ReplyDelete