Pretend you are an elephant. You are walking around and you don’t see any more elephants in sight. So, there you are, minding your own business, and all of the sudden, BOOM! Something just shot in the ankle. Falling to the ground, BOOM! Another one comes and hits you in the stomach. You open your eyes as wide as you can and you see three men running towards you. You are dying and you feel pain because these men are sawing off your tusks and for what? What did you do to deserve this pain and sad death? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Poaching is the illegal hunting, killing or capturing of animals. Human beings have disrupted the natural order in which these animals control their own population. A certain amount of elephants are allowed to be hunted each year during a certain season so elephants don’t get over populated. Fifteen years ago, there were over one million African elephants. Today there are less than 300,000. At this rate, poaching will cause many groups of elephants to be extinct by the year 2020. After there are no more elephants or other animals to kill, what will poachers do for money? You must follow the laws that are in place for the legal killing of animals. If you don’t, it disrupts the entire environment in which these animals live. I believe that poaching is wrong and you should too.

The continent of Africa has experienced a huge decline in the number of elephants in the last few decades. Between 1979 and 1989, nearly half of Africa’s elephants were killed for their ivory. The expansion of human populations increased in conflict between people and elephants. Human settlements limit an elephant’s range of movement. Elephants would feast on crops and destroy a farmer’s livelihood and he would kill the elephant.

“With the poisoned tip of a metal arrow piercing her right leg, a pregnant elephant stumbles miles through the African bush toward her death. After two days of agony, she falls to the red earth, while her killers, followed on bicycles and carrying butchering knives, wait for the end to come. In the darkness of a Kenyan night, the four poachers watch as she first loses her unborn calf in a spontaneous miscarriage provoked by the poison in her body. An hour later, after the 35-year-old elephant dies, they move in – hacking of her face to steal the two precious ivory tusks which will make them rich for years.” Sue Reid; entered this story into her journal while keeping watch over an elephant’s habitat.

Animals should not be losing their lives at the hands of greedy people trying to make unethical money. Put yourself in the shoes of a beautiful animal minding their own business walking through the bush in Africa, only to painfully lose your life for a part of your body for illegal money. I loathe poaching.