Yes, you read that correctly – 25,000 elephants. Africa has lost 600,000 in the last ten years.  34.7 tons of illegal ivory is seized every year, only about 10 per cent of the total trade.

And guess why it is in such demand?  Yes, you’ve guessed it!  It’s for religious reasons.  The devout praise their gods and stand by indifferent the four-footed creatures are massacred to make statuettes, crosses, and other religious graven images (weren’t they banned by a jealous God?).   According to Genesis, God created the animals, including the elephants.  Don’t Christians read Genesis any more?  Why do I, a religio-sceptic,  seem to know more about it than the flock?

The worst offender is the Catholic Church, mainly in countries like the Philippines, where the word for ivory, “glaring”,  has a second meaning: religious statuettes.  If you buy an ivory cross in Manila you can send it to be blessed by the Vatican.  Politicians present ivory images to the Pope, who casts a blind eye to the illegal origin of the ivory.  Smuggling is rife, and is regarded as an act of “devotion”  by the church.  And it is not only Catholics who are guilty; sales of carved ivory to Buddhists are worth $15.8 billion a year.  What good could one do with $15.8 billion!

Religion is the lifeblood of the bloody and destructive ivory trade. It seems religions cannot conduct themselves without it.  There are just too many people despoiling the environment and the precious creatures that dwell within it.

Epicureans should love and cherish all creatures, and  feel dismay and disgust with hypocrisy wherever it is found.  Will somebody come forward and defend the Vatican and Mother Church?  Please! Be my guest!

(statistics on the ivory trade from National Geographic magazine).