Yao Ming tours Kenya with documentary film crew, "because only elephants should wear ivory"
by Jason Straziuso for the Associated Press
August 16, 2012
re-blogged from care2.com
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — One of China’s most visible stars wants his countrymen to know that their rising appetite for ivory is resulting in dead elephants across Africa.
The former NBA star Yao Ming on Thursday ended a weeklong trip to Kenya where he mingled among elephants and walked with indigenous tribes. The trip is part of an effort to let China’s increasingly affluent middle class know that its interest in small ivory trinkets results in the deaths of 6-ton beasts.
“I think we need to increase the public awareness of what ivory is made of,” Yao said. “The elephants, including rhinos, their numbers are decreasing.”
Images of Yao in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve included the towering former Houston Rockets center walking among colorfully dressed Kenyan tribeswomen and riding in a safari vehicle through a field full of elephants. But one of the starkest images was of Yao bending down to look at the carcass of an elephant whose face was carved away by poachers seeking the beast’s valuable ivory tusks.
