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