We want to think of elephants living free in the wilds of Africa and Asia.

We want to believe that every elephant is free to take a mud bath when he or she wants to.

All of these elephants are now living free at The Elephant Sanctuary, but the reality is that they all were abused before being rescued.

Reality

(Elephant - Ivory - 02)  These tusks are being burned in an attempt to stop the poaching of elephants for their ivory.  The process involved in procuring ivory is indeed horrific. The elephant must be killed before the ivory can be procured - stoning, poison dart resulting in slow painful death or machine gun slaughter of entire herds at waterholes. Regardless of the mode in which the elephants are killed, the process of extracting the ivory is all the same. In order to obtain all the ivory from the elephant, the hunter and poacher must cut into the head because approximately 25% of the ivory is contained in the head. What is then left on the fields of the African or Asian plains is the corpse of a tusk less elephant with a mutilated face and head.

Volunteer Journalist: Maureen Adams
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