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The Ivory Game: the must see documentary

Blog photo - Ivory Trade
Blog photo - Ivory Trade

The Ivory Game, a documentary that was released to Netflix in Autumn last year, exposes the brutal truth of ivory trafficking and its fight against the extinction of elephants in the wild.

Every 15 minutes, an elephant is killed for its tusks.

Minutes into the documentary, you are soon struck by a horrifying realisation. Will our grandchildren ever see an elephant wild in the African plains? Will poachers and local groups still take life-threatening risks to get an insignificant share of the illegal money? Will elephants only exist in films, books and stories?

Filmed throughout the national parks in Tanzania, Kenya and Botswana, the Ivory Game sheds a dark light on all of these questions, and shows behind the scenes footage of the poachers and their reasons behind the killings, the park rangers and their consistent efforts to safeguard these magnificent creatures, and new and discrete undercover work amongst China’s dominating ivory market.

The documentary finishes in flames, as it captures Kenya’s mass burning of 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and more than 1 tonne of rhino horn. According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, it was done to send out a strong message. That message, which speaks a thousand words, was simply: “worth more alive”.

President Kenyatta was the one to light the first pyre, sending the ivory piles up in flames. In doing so, he emphasised Kenya’s zero tolerance policies and laws against poaching and illegal wildlife trafficking, as well as showing horror and devastation for the country.

Believed to be the largest stockpile ever destroyed, the scenes in Nairobi National Park of the mass crematorium on the 30th of April 2016, is to go down in history.

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