Elephant Conservation Tour in China – June 9 – Guangzhou
As the days go by, I feel further and further away from home. It seems this ivory trade is the same for many of the people we meet here. I’ve heard them say it dozens of times over the past few days “ivory trade is ‘far away’ from our reality.” I believe them. Most have not ever seen ivory. They say Li Bingbing and Yao do good work, but that’s just what celebrities do. They want a connection. I see a connection. In almost every talk we’ve given, someone has said that given a chance, they might have asked for ivory from someone coming from Africa. This means that without even thinking about it, many are in fact engaged or involved…because ivory is beautiful, it is pure, it is a long term investment. They need a connection with elephants, to disconnect them from ivory. Our internship program could provide this: regular Chinese contributing to elephant research, meeting the elephants we know for themselves, and beaming it out to their “reality.”
Maybe this is too idealistic. But in a land where one man led an idealistic revolution that forged the foundations of this Herculean nation, I’d like to think we are in good company.
Related Elephant Conservation Tour in China blogs: June 8, 2014 June 10, 2014