Readers React: How state laws are saving elephants

To the editor: Even as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers protecting elephants by banning ivory sales, states deserve praise for passing laws now to ban in-state ivory sales. These complement the ongoing global and federal efforts to save elephants. (“States are eyeing stiffer ivory laws amid a surge in elephant poaching,� Sept. 2)

Elephant poaching networks are, in many cases, well-organized terrorist bands pillaging Africa’s remaining elephants for ivory to finance their attacks on civilians and even national governments. Global leaders, including President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the British royal family, have mounted a vigorous, concerted effort to rally the international community to stem the poaching crisis.

The U.S., as the second-largest market for ivory in the world after China, has a moral responsibility not only to do all we can to protect elephants but to dry up the profit-making enterprise for terrorists bent on destabilizing many African nations.

Iris Ho, Washington

The writer is a wildlife program manager for the Humane Society International.