What did you think when you saw those great piles of elephant tusks burning on TV, or read about them in the papers? Did you welcome this as a slap in the face of poachers everywhere and a step in the right direction? Or did you wonder, as David Attenborough did, that it would make little difference, and might even act as some sort of perverse incentive to further killing?
Perhaps one piece of hope is to try make the money that comes from looking after elephants more significant (and safer to acquire) than that which comes from poaching. Some, we know, think that income from hunting (though not elephant) has a role to play. Others think that hunting is just a manifestation of the same problem, not a solution to it.
Meanwhile, elephants are being killed. Sadly, it’s all grist to the mill of environmental education programmes everywhere.