Religious Ivory Demand Killing Elephants by Thousands, Report Says

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS
By Oliver Payne

The home of a Filipino collector is lavish with ivory religious icons.

WASHINGTON---While it's impossible to say exactly how many elephants are slaughtered annually, a conservative estimate for 2011 is more than 25,000. And thousands of those are dying to satisfy religious devotion, their tusks smuggled into countries to be carved into religious artifacts: ivory baby Jesuses and saints for Catholics in the Philippines, Islamic prayer beads for Muslims and Coptic crosses for Christians in Egypt, amulets and carvings for Buddhists in Thailand, and in China—the world's biggest ivory-consumer country—elaborate Buddhist and Taoist carvings for investors. [link]