BLOOD IVORY: THE MASSACRE OF THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT. By Robin Brown.

2008 1st edition. 8vo (159 x 240mm). Ppxx,235. B/w photograph plates. Black boards, spine titled in gilt.

This book "tells the story of how the professional hunting fraternity was the first to realise the threat to the elephant and how it kick-started the whole conservation movement. It is not a story with a happy ending, however. it is a tale of war: colonialists against traditional practices and customes; newly-independent African countries against each other; p[oachers and smugglers against any kind of constraint. And at the heart of this tragic tale is the sad irony that it is only in the two countries which have not supported the international ban on the sale of elephant ivory (South Africa and Botswana) that viable breeding populations have been maintaine." The author is a wildlife film make who has studied this question in depth throughout his career.