Elephants are one of nature’s most popular creatures. And one of its most protected. The ivory trade has been outlawed for many decades. Yet, a recent CNN guest column claimed that renewed poaching to feed an illegal Asian ivory market (along with more run-of-the-mill lefty environmental threats) is “a tragedy beyond reckoning.”

The hyperbolic June 15 article that said saving the elephant is “an urgent moral imperative” (those, to the author, are the words of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel).  The piece, by photographer and filmmaker Cyril Christo, explained the killing of the elephant is one of the pressing world issues.