Elephant Report Web Quest Questions:

Answer all questions in your lab journal. Make sure and provide a complete answer and note all websites used for each answer.

Part I. Elephant Laws

Customs officials say the imported ivory is illegal. What does this mean?

*    Does the ivory come from a country where elephants cannot be killed?

*    Does the ivory come from a country that cannot sell its stockpiled ivory?

*    Does it come from a country that should not be re-selling ivory?

By going to the Web to answer the following questions and with your electrophoresis data, you can decide if the detained traveler is in deep doo-doo with the INS Customs Office.

1. At the moment, which countries are allowed to kill elephants for ivory or see stockpiled ivory? (Hint: It would do you well to check out sites that discuss the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for an overview of the current law and issues related to the ivory trade.

Helpful Sites: http://international.fws.gov/global/cites/cites.html

http://www.wildnetafrica.com/cites/issues.html

http://www.cites.org

 

2. At this moment, which countries are permitted to buy, process, and re-sell ivory from Africa?

3. At the moment, can any ivory products be imported into the United States?

4. Over the past few years, which countries have been allowed to kill elephants for ivory or sell stockpiled ivory from cullings?

II. Elephant Ethics

The following ethical and philosophical questions are difficult to research on the Web. You might find the related questions easier to answer and those answers helpful in answering the more general number question.

1. How do you think a person justifies the poaching or legal killing of elephants? How much does a poacher earn from selling an ivory tusk? What is the monthly salary of an African farmer?

Search: elephant ivory Africa prices
http://www.american.edu/TED/ELEPHANT.htm

http://whyfiles.org/043elephant/main3.html

2. Should elephant culling be legalized in countries with an abundance of elephants? Should it be legal for the ivory from culled elephants to be sold on the open market? Do you think elephants should be killed for their ivory in order to pay for maintaining elephant habitat?

Related Questions: What is culling/ why are herds culled? How is culled ivory stored? If sold, who earns the money and what is the money used for? What are alternatives to culling?

Search: cull Africa elephant
http://www.wildnetafrica.com/news/elephantculling/newsmessages/1.html
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/CommunitySupport/CUSO/cruel.html

3. If the hunting and killing of elephants is s cultural tradition, should it be allowed to occur for certain groups of people? Should it be banned? If elephants compete with humans for agricultural or forest resources, should those elephants be removed?

Related Questions: how has the elephant been used by native cultures? Who used elephant products? Were enough elephant killed prior to colonization by Europeans to threaten the existence of the species? Where has deforestation occurred? What can be done to maintain elephant habitat?

Search: culture ivory Africa elephant forest agriculture

http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Resources/Look/Animals/ntan.html
http://www.panda.org/resources/publications/species/elephant/elephant4.html

4. Can an international group make policy decisions for individual countries and be responsible for enforcing them? Should scientific data alone be used to determine international policy decisions?

Related Questions: What international agencies regulate ivory trade? Who has opposed the regulation? Under what authority do the international agencies operate?

Search: international enforcement ivory elephant opposition

http://www.traffic.org/cop11/briefingroom/etis.html

http://www.idsnet.org/Papers/Essays-1998/Garforth/page5.html

http://www.wildnetafrica.com/cites/info/iss_014_debate.html

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