Doing business in elephant parts can result in a 15-year prison term in Nepal

Photo by Vidheha Ranjan

By Shila Shrestha What did millions of years of evolution make elephant tusks for? For the protection of their families, their territories, and themselves. A 2015 report by World Wildlife Fund released on the trade of animal parts tells of the illegal ivory business that ranges in the billions. This trade was so bad that in January 2018, even Hong Kong's lawmakers bowed to public pressure and voted to ban such trade even though in Japan and other sections of Asia, trade in animal parts is still legal. Unfortunately, as several countries allow the ivory trade legally to make artefacts and medicine, human beings have devastated elephant populations and undermined international laws. Not only the animal itself, but communities, law and order professionals, and even governments have come under pressure in this money-driven crime and crossfire. A twelve mg ivory tablet is used by some in the medical field to create a class of medicines known as ectoparasiticides. The medicine helps to cure several types of parasite infections as well as head lice, scabies, river blindness (onchocerciasis), many types of diarrhoea (strongyloidiasis) and worm infections. However, other chemicals do this work just as well or better. Therefore, there is no real need to take the life and parts of elephants to cure human diseases. Every year 20,000 elephants are killed by human beings. One male elephant’s two tusks weigh more than 250 pounds and the price of a pound of ivory is as much as US $1,500 on the black market. In Nepal, however, trade in elephant parts is completely banned by law. Punishments can be quite high and the consequences are not worth the risk. Organizations like the Nepal government, Stand Up 4 Elephants, World Wildlife Fund are working to protect elephants and other animals. The National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act prohibits wildlife hunting unless permits have been provided. Domesticated animals are not allowed to graze so they do not transfer diseases to animals in the wild. “A person who illegally kills, injures, sells, purchases, transfers, or obtains ‘rhinoceros, tiger, elephant, musk deer, clouded leopard, snow leopard, or bison, or keeps, purchases, or sells rhinoceros horn or musk-pods or the fur of snow leopard, as well as trophies of any other protected wildlife’, is punished with a fine or imprisonment 5-15 years, or both,” according to Institute of Animal Law of Asia. Therefore, whoever possesses or aims to trade in this field should know of the law in Nepal and how it can be used to protect animals and their rights.