SS+Japanese+Soft+Power+DA+-+Elephants

A. Ban on ivory trade results in the elephant population rebounding. The Times, July 15, 2007 (“Revenge of the culled elephants”, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2076009.ece) [Ha]

The problem is exacerbated by an increase in elephant numbers. Herds in southern Africa have rebounded since elephants were declared in danger of extinction and a ban on ivory sales was imposed in 1989. Zambia has seen numbers rise from 7,000 to an estimated 30,000.

“The basic management of elephants is out of sync,” Osborn argues. “People believe elephants are near extinction. In fact it’s the other way round, they’re recolonising parts of southern Africa where they haven’t been for 100 years.”

B. Japanese influence lifts the ban, encouraging ivory trade. Utusan Express, 3 June 2002 (“Asian elephant conservationists warn against lifting ivory ban”, http://www.jphpk.gov.my/English/June02%203A.htm) [O’Brien]

Trade in Asian elephant ivory has been banned since 1976, Menon said. African elephant ivory trading was banned from 1989 until 1997, when CITES allowed Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe to sell 60 tons of ivory a year to Japan. CITES scrapped that provision and again banned international ivory trading at its last meeting in 2000. Conservationists estimate that only 35,000 Asian elephants are still roaming the wild, more than half of them in southern India. Other concentrations are in Sumatra, Indonesia, parts of Sri Lanka, and western Myanmar, also known as Burma. This week's conference rapped the Japanese government for not taking action to protect the Asian elephant and expressed concern about reports of laxity in Japan's enforcement of controls on ivory trade. It called upon the Japanese government not to support easing the ban on ivory trading. Menon said ``monopolies'' in Japan dominate the international trade in ivory and that Asia's richest nation is expected to lobby heavily for the ban to be lifted. ``Japan can influence countries into voting for them - developmental aid or any sort of incentive can be used,'' Menon said, expressing concern the ban could be overturned in November. – AP

== C. Decline in elephants leads to extinction. Daily Mirror, May 19, 2007 (“Deforestation-A case for protecting elephants”, http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/05/19/feat/2.asp) [Ha]

By providing the habitat (forest, grass land, river and lakes) to sustain a population of breeding and genetically sound elephants would ensure that our weather patterns, availability of water, sunlight and fresh air will remain relatively better.. Elephants help to maintain bio-diversity by continuously shaping their environment and in many cases, the survival of other animals in the eco-system depends on them. An elephant is known as a “Super-Keystone Species” i.e. more than a keystone-species. This term was coined by Shoshani. Super-Keystone Species refers to the elephant for three reasons.

1. Elephants are keystone species: their ecological relationships appear to exceed those of other known keystone species partly because of their huge biomass, and partly because of extensive modifications to their environments.

2. Being the largest living terrestrial mammals, elephants require very large home ranges. Thus, to conserve a habitat large enough for elephants to be in balance with their environment automatically implies saving areas that will benefit many other animals living in the same ecosystem; the reverse is not true.

3. Elephants are the only living terrestrial mammals whose longevity is similar to that of humans and, subsequently, can be, and have been, used as models to study age-dependent diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases and arthritis), and their possible treatments.

(Jeheskel Shoshani) Our country and the world have been left in our trust to be handed over to the next generation so that they may prosper and live. So let the wild elephant be a symbol of our very own survival for without a protected environment, not just first the elephant, but we will become extinct. Therefore, we need elephants not merely to market our country as a wild life destination but for deeper reasons both spiritual and more basically survival. Ranil Pieris