Commentary On The Film, Explorer: Warlords Of Ivory

Explorer: Warlords of Ivory explores the ivory trade that runs rampant throughout Central Africa. Bryan Christy, an investigative journalist, seeks to answer the question, who is killing the elephants and what are they doing with the ivory they obtain? Christy visits Central Africa to track the ivory trade and find out how exactly it operates. He relied on specially crafted phony elephant tusks, and the help of many African natives. Christy hopes to put a face to the criminals behind the ivory trade and expose the cruelties that are inflicted upon wild elephants. Bryan Christy, with the help of taxidermist George Dant, designed several forged elephant tusks that were implanted with GPS tracking devices that would be used to track where the ivory travels after it has been forcefully taken from the elephants. The replica elephant tusks had to look, feel, and smell like real ivory in order to fool the smugglers. Once the phony tusks were complete, Christy traveled

The scenes showing their dead carcasses were extremely disturbing; however, I think that the documentary was very eye opening and informational. I was surprised to learn that the ivory trade was so widespread and that it’s linked to the infamous Joseph Kony and other terrorist organizations. I’ve previously learned about the illegal poaching that occurs in Africa because ivory is so valuable, but I, like many others, didn’t realize the illegal ivory trade was tied to terrorism and Joseph Kony. It makes sense that terrorism and the illegal poaching of elephants for their ivory are closely linked; they trade the valuable ivory for weapons and money, which in turn helps them poach more elephants. As we have learned throughout this class, terrorists need to obtain money for their organizations in order to carry out their attacks, and the ivory trade is the perfect way for terrorist in Africa to get their desperately needed