Giants Club: African leaders to gather in Kenya to tackle elephant poaching crisis

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / 1 Comment

In the past three years, poachers have killed 100,000 elephants in Africa for illegal ivory markets AFP/Getty Images

By Alex Dymoke
February 26, 2016 / The Independent

The President of Kenya is to host a historic gathering of African leaders in April to address the elephant-poaching crisis in the first meeting of the Giants Club, the wildlife-protection initiative backed by The Independent.

It will be followed by the burning of a vast 120 tonne stockpile of ivory, much of it seized by the Kenyan state from poaching gangs, to show the government’s zero tolerance to the illegal wildlife trade. The blaze will be eight times larger than any ivory stockpile previously destroyed before.
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We beat the ivory trade once. Now we must beat it once and for all.

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / Leave a comment

By Uhuru Kenyatta; President of Kenya
February 26, 2016/ The Independent

I am delighted to host the inaugural Giants Club Summit in Kenya at the end of April. Alongside other African heads of state, we will use this opportunity to underline the global intent to put an end, once again, to the butchering of elephants and rhinos by selfish criminal gangs.

I say once again because we have done it before. In 1990, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) banned the international ivory trade after a decade in which the population of African elephants halved from 1.3 million to 600,000 animals. Continue reading →

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An Open Letter to the Cleveland Orchestra

February 16, 2016March 28, 2020 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / 22 Comments

Photo Credit; WWF

Dear Cleveland Orchestra,

My name is Christina LaMonica, and I am the Founder of Ivory Free Ohio, a grassroots organization dedicated to outlawing all intra-state sales of Ivory, Rhino Horn, and Trophy Hunting products in our state without exemption. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve communicated via telephone and emails regarding our movement and your continued support.

As you are aware, we’ve worked diligently with Senator Frank LaRose and his staff, educating them on the adverse effects of the Ivory trade while creating legislation that protects our national security and helps Africa’s keystone species from extinction.

Using an ax, machete, and chainsaw, poachers hack the faces of Elephants and Rhinos while they are still alive. Photo Credit; The Tsavo Trust

The United States is the largest consumer of Ivory and Rhino Horn products- 2nd to China. One Elephant is slaughtered every 15 minutes. That’s four an hour, 96 a day, 672 a week, 2,880 a month, and 34,560 a year. And in the time it took you and your constituents (Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Cleveland Museum of Art) to hijack our Ivory Bill, over 25,000 Elephants have been killed for their Ivory tusks.

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