Non-Fiction Reading response

The article, The Ivory War by Patricia Smith, is about elephants being killed for their tusks. Thousands of elephants are killed for their ivory. Poachers shoot the elephant, take their tusks, and just leaves the body lying there. In the article it states, “Some experts say that if nothing done to stop the slaughter, African elephants could on the road to extinction.”

            The author wants me to think that this is a bad idea. I feel that this is a horrible thing that these people are doing to the elephants. A person from the Wildlife Conservation Society, an ecologist, and Wu Shaohua were quoted in this article. Cristian Samper (Wildlife Conservation Society) and Andrew Dobson (ecologist) were both on the same boat. They feel like killing elephants for their tusks is a bad idea. But, Wu Shaohua says, “Love for ivory is in our blood.” He is saying that it’s hard for him not to love the ivory so much.

            This article makes me wonder why people continue to kill elephants. This is making them an endangered species. I would like to further research if there is anything being done to stop this.