What happened on February 27 th?

Elephants at the Toronto Zoo

Okay time to rant again. I remember in 1989 the announcement of the ban on Ivory sales and the attempt to stop ivory poaching. It was a big media show, there was a huge bonfire where they burned tons of Ivory. The African Elephant population had been driven down from 1.3 million in 1979 to 625,000 in 1989. Over 200 elephants a day were being killed by hunters for only their Ivory with their bodies being left to rot. So countries that belonged to Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species agreed to put a stop to the worldwide trade in Ivory. Everything seemed to be getting better and the story went off the high profile radar... or the cause celebratie of the day.

Then I found today’s stories online.. From Australia, Canada, the US and the UK. Poaching of the African Elephant for its Ivory has risen to an unprecedented level since the 1989 ban. We are pushing a beautiful animal to extinction in the wild. I want to take a trip to Africa to see these creatures in the wild. I want my grandkids to know that these creatures are still walking the earth. Man has driven thousands of species to extinction over the last 40 years, my life time. This has to stop now. Stop hunting for pleasure, stop hunting for sport, and stop hunting for profit. Look I know how to hunt, I know how to shot, I choose not to because I have no need. If I needed to hunt for food for my family, believe me I would have no qualms. But hunting for profit is wrong. The problem is that if there is not a market then there is no need to hunt, but there is a black market and this species is being driven to extinction by our greed. 23,000 Elephants were killed in 2006... Did anyone here about the massacre at Zakouma National Park in Chad? I sure as hell didn't see any reports, because we all thought that everything was hunky dory we forgot about the problem, and now it is worse. We have to slow and stop the extinction of the African Elephant. This is the responsibility of everyone. Now we just have to figure out how we can help. One of the first steps that we can do is not buy Ivory when we go on holiday. We can boycott any store that is trying to sell Ivory (it's illegal to import ivory into Canada). We can raise awareness to this problem by talking about the poaching and making sure that the elephants don't become a cause celebre again

On a lighter note, Heroes was on last night on NBC and on Sunday on Global (the idiots put it up against the Oscars). I missed most of last weeks show (Stan Lee did a walk on as a bus driver, Eldest and I were going was that Stan Lee?, Wife is going who?, you had to be there).. I got to see Isaac try to shot Peter, but hit and kill Simone. And Mohinder is running around with Sylar (Sylar is pretending to be someone else). Sunday I got to see Bennet being shot by the Haitian .. wtf???? When I got home from TaiKwonDo last night I forgot to watch NBC at 9pm, Wife was watching Two and a Half Men. At 9:30 we remember Heroes is on .. so we missed a half hour .. which is a lot for this show .. Wow .. read the plot outline at Wikipedia. The only thing I can say is Wow!, this is the best show on TV .. Bennets bosses want Claire, they now control Matt Parkman and radio active man. The Haitian is an outlaw, Bennet lies to protect Claire and his position blaming the Haitian for hiding Claire.

Next weeks trailer was enough to make me watch, I'll miss TaiKwonDo if I have to .. Simone is seen standing with blood on her chest and she says something like "So are you going to kill me again", can Peter transfer his power?, is Simone a hero? Wow. I have to go online tonight and watch the show at the Global website.