"Religious Ivory Demand Killing Elephants by Thousands, Report Says"

Photograph by Brent Stirton, National Geographic

Click here to see original article.

Written By:

Oliver Payne

National Geographic

Published September 14, 2012

Reports reveal that elephants are being "illegally killed across Africa at the highest rates in a decade..." (Payne). But what exactly makes what is now a dwindling species so valuable to human interest? Is it for survival value such as food, clothing, or shelter? Not so. Most elephants are hunted in order to obtain the ivory within their tusks. Rough estimates show that around 20,000+ elephants are slaughtered annually, most of which only to satisfy religious consumerism. 

Ivory is smuggled into numerous countries such as the Philippines to be made into "Santo Niño" (Child Jesus) statues for Roman Catholics. This practice is supported even among the 

prominent Filipino Catholics in the country. National Geographic reporter Bryan Christy reports 

that Father Vicente Lina, Jr. (Father Jay) encourages people to purchase religious icons made of 

"new" ivory, or in other words, smuggled. Father Jay told Christy that certain Muslims illegally bring 

in the ivory from Africa to get around the global ban of ivory trade that was brought upon in 1990. 

National Geographic has asked the Vatican to comment on said ivory use earlier in the week, but 

has yet to receive an answer as of September 14.

I chose to shed light on a snippet of this article because I, myself, am a Filipino Roman Catholic 

and it makes me ponder why people of my faith and culture would take part in such a crisis. I do 

not target the masses of practicing Catholics in the Philippines who are not aware of the smuggled 

ivory, but the higher-ups in the Church and those who do realize the illegalities and continue to 

contribute to a growing issue. Even so, the Roman Catholic catechism preaches, "It is contrary to 

human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly."

- Andrew