henmgn Review of The Ivory Game

The Ivory Game (2016)

The Ivory Game: A Review by an Environmental Science Major

[8/10 · 25 November 2021]

Everyone is familiar with ivory and where it comes from. But not a lot of people really take the time to consider all that the ivory goes through just to get into the hands of the consumers and sellers. The amount of elephants and rhinos that die each year to poachers killing them for their ivory is insane. This documentary really allows the view to see how big of a problem it actually is. The documentary follows many people all over Africa and China in an attempt to catch a man who runs one of the biggest ivory poaching rings in Africa called Shetani or the devil because he has killed over 10,000 elephants. We also get to see a journalist go undercover to really get the facts of how corrupt the police forces are that they can be bribed to allow these smugglers to bring so many tons of ivory into China yearly. Being able to see the guard hunting the poachers in Africa and seeing the journalist talking with the people who buy this ivory was truly educational. And to see them catch Shetani after just missing him for three years was amazing. But to also see how greedy these poachers were to kill a herd of 10 elephants in the dead of night just for their tusk because it was $1500 USD (including shipping) per kilogram of ivory. The amount of money that these people have in warehouses in the form of ivory is truly insane. This documentary is a wonderful educational example of everything that is going on with this illegal poaching and trading of ivory from Africa to China, where in 2017 (a year after this documentary came out) China finally made it illegal to buy or sell ivory. Which means that people are just going to go out of their way to be more sneaky and illusive when selling or buying ivory. The symbology of burning the collected ivory at the end of the documentary was truly poetic in that it symbolized the ivory trade coming to an end.