Religious Ivory Demand Killing Elephants by Thousands, Report Says

[cbayer]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120914-ivory-religious-elephants-ban-science-religion/

Despite global ivory ban, tusks carved into Jesuses, prayer beads, amulets.


The home of a Filipino collector is lavish with ivory religious icons.
Photograph by Brent Stirton, National Geographic

Oliver Payne
National Geographic News
Published September 14, 2012

Elephants are being illegally killed across Africa at the highest rates in a decade, and the global religious market for ivory is a driving force. "Blood Ivory," the cover story in the October issue of National Geographic, offers the first in-depth investigation of this untold story.

While it's impossible to say exactly how many elephants are slaughtered annually, a conservative estimate for 2011 is more than 25,000. And thousands of those are dying to satisfy religious devotion, their tusks smuggled into countries to be carved into religious artifacts: ivory baby Jesuses and saints for Catholics in the Philippines, Islamic prayer beads for Muslims and Coptic crosses for Christians in Egypt, amulets and carvings for Buddhists in Thailand, and in China—the world's biggest ivory-consumer country—elaborate Buddhist and Taoist carvings for investors. (Interactive graphic: elephant decline, poaching estimates, and ivory seizures.)

If someone in the Philippines wants to smuggle an ivory statue of the baby Jesus to the U.S., Msgr. Cristobal Garcia is happy to advise, writes National Geographic investigative reporter Bryan Christy. "Wrap it in old, stinky underwear and pour ketchup on it so it looks shitty with blood," Garcia told Christy. "This is how it is done."

Monsignor Garcia is head of protocol for the archdiocese of Cebu, the largest in the Philippines, giving him a flock of nearly 4 million in a country of 75 million Roman Catholics, the world's third largest Catholic population. The tradition of carving ivory into religious pieces in the Philippines is so deeply rooted that in Cebu the word for ivory, garing, also means "religious statue."

more at link

[Smilo]

1. More show and tell - my crappy religious artifact

is better than your crappy religious artifact.

And, of course, while they are killing off elephants to show of their "devotion" - they are also not following the tenets of their respective religions.

[cbayer]

2. I'm not sure how the Buddhists and Taoists in China (the biggest consumer) justify this.

Are they oblivious or do they have some other kind rationale?

[ladjf]

3. As the piano manufacturers have learned, good quality plastics look better and last longer

than ivory. nt