General Article Do elephants deserve foreign aid?

This article is 9 years old. Click here to view the latest articles for this topic.

Zac Goldsmith MP is calling on the UK government to release some of its billions of ‘Foreign Aid’ money to help stop the decimation of wildlife in developing nations.

We at Care for the Wild helped to draft the wording of Zac’s Early Day Motion (EDM) and fully support it, but why?

Surely Foreign Aid is meant to save humans, not animals? So the question is – how can saving an elephant help a human?

Basically, wildlife and humans need each other – they always have and they always will, but not always for the right reasons. Right now in Africa, an elephant is killed for its tusks every 15 minutes – around 40,000 each year – for a lovely trinket to adorn someone’s mantel piece, or to be used as chopsticks, jewellery or a business gift to prove stature.

It’s not just elephants. This year in South Africa alone, some 900 rhinos have been killed for their horn – this compares with 668 last year (and by way of comparison of just how severe the issue has got over recent years, this is an ...

Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?

Sign up now for an immediate no obligation FREE TRIAL and view the entire collection