Depending on whose statistics one believes, the current population of African elephants now stands at somewhere between 415,000 and 700,000.
The lifespan of an elephant is around 60 years. Therefore somewhere between around 6,900 and 11,600 elephants die of natural causes every single year.
The question is, what happens to all the ivory resulting from the natural deaths of these magnificent creatures? In the case of a total ban, one can only assume that all of this modern ivory will most certainly be destroyed.
No matter what the answer, all of this does pose some rather interesting ethical questions.
Brian Moffatt
Scotland
