The Ivory Game is a documentary about the ivory trade in Africa and China. The filmmakers followed multiple task forces that aimed to arrest and kill poachers, collect ivory from stockpiles, and conduct undercover investigations on black market traders. One of the crews followed the head of security in southern Kenya, Craig Millar. He led the effort to get fences put up for the farmers in the area. These farmers wanted to kill elephants because they were trampling and eating their crops. To them, the elephants were destroying their livelihood, so Craig put in effort to get fences put in. According to him, fences are the future of protecting the elephants in this area. There was also a crew following the task force in charge of tracking down "The Devil", the man responsible for most of the elephant deaths in recent years. Through lots of investigative work, the crew tracked him down and arrested him. Following this, President Barack Obama and the president of China banned the ivory trade in their respective countries. This was big with Hong Kong holding the biggest ivory trade market in the world. Andrea says that this is the first time in years that he has had hope.
This documentary has heavy sustainability implications in it. One of the main points over the whole film is the market for ivory. Prices for ivory are continuing to go up. It was explained in the documentary that the black-market traders want the extinction of elephants because as prices go up, more elephants are killed, and with less elephants price shoots up even further, giving them more and more profit. The economic nature of the ivory trade must be assessed, and that is why countries are starting to ban the trade. They are also removing the ivory from the black market by burning recovered stockpiles. This may help to reduce the sheer amount of ivory available on the market and discourage the trade.
This documentary was a very enjoyable watch. I had no idea about the sheer volume of ivory on the black market, and past that I was exposed to the prices of ivory. One sword shown in the documentary was worth over 200,000 dollars. Seeing the comparison in numbers from the 1970's to now (over a million elephants in the region to 200-400,000) made me very concerned for the endangered nature of elephants. Quite honestly this documentary made me want to put on some camouflage and go stop poachers in the middle of the night. It was extremely informative and also quite encouraging. Knowing that there are people in the fight that care for these animals and seeing the successes that they are having was awesome to see and showed me that progress is being made.
This documentary has heavy sustainability implications in it. One of the main points over the whole film is the market for ivory. Prices for ivory are continuing to go up. It was explained in the documentary that the black-market traders want the extinction of elephants because as prices go up, more elephants are killed, and with less elephants price shoots up even further, giving them more and more profit. The economic nature of the ivory trade must be assessed, and that is why countries are starting to ban the trade. They are also removing the ivory from the black market by burning recovered stockpiles. This may help to reduce the sheer amount of ivory available on the market and discourage the trade.
This documentary was a very enjoyable watch. I had no idea about the sheer volume of ivory on the black market, and past that I was exposed to the prices of ivory. One sword shown in the documentary was worth over 200,000 dollars. Seeing the comparison in numbers from the 1970's to now (over a million elephants in the region to 200-400,000) made me very concerned for the endangered nature of elephants. Quite honestly this documentary made me want to put on some camouflage and go stop poachers in the middle of the night. It was extremely informative and also quite encouraging. Knowing that there are people in the fight that care for these animals and seeing the successes that they are having was awesome to see and showed me that progress is being made.