In the mid-1980s it was estimated that 200-300 elephants were killed each day . For the Asian elephants , only the males have tusks and are poached . This interferes with breeding . A lot of people have thought about what can be done to stop the illegal poaching of elephants . Some people think that making the sale of ivory legal will actually cut down on how many elephants are killed each year . Governments around the world tried this in what is called the Japan Experiment . CITES The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ( CITES ) is an international agreement between governments . Its goal is to make sure that international trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival . CITES helps to control international trade of certain species of animals , including elephants with ivory trade . They have a licensing system to control imports and exports . It ’ s easy to kill an elephant , but it ’ s hard to find and count the dead bodies . It has taken CITES years to get the counting program running which makes a lot of the programs to help the situation hard to judge . CITES proposed a ban on ivory sales . Not all countries in the group agreed . In 1997 CITES held its