By ETTY GROSSMAN

Have you ever heard about the ivory trade? If you aren’t an animal activist, you probably haven’t.

News media have failed in the attempt of covering this type of issue, maybe because it involves a lot of international legal details or perhaps it is because they know very little about it.

Even though it isn’t covered enough, the ivory trade is still a huge problem for which every single person interested in giving humanity a better name should be interested.

Ivory trade is the commercial, often an illegal exchange of the ivory tusks of animals such as elephants, hippopotamus, walrus and mammoths. Ivory isn’t a necessary material, it is simply used to make decorative items. However, it’s estimated that 33,000 elephants are killed every year just for their ivory; and with the current rate of slaughter, they will be extinct long before the midway point of this century. How ridiculous, how inhuman!

Fortunately for us, social media not only has addressed the situation but has also created a powerful campaign in order to reach as many people as possible around the world.

As a response to the injustice committed against wild and innocent animals, WildAid, an organization that works to reduce global consumption of wildlife products, launched a new campaign last week: #JoinTheHerd and make 2016 the Year of the Elephant, with the intention of making 2016 the year when more elephants are born than killed by poachers.

The idea went viral, few hours after launching it, actors, musicians, authors, athletes and millions of people joined the herd by changing their social media profile picture for one that shows half an elephant and half the person’s face … now you know why your Facebook was full of elephants …

#JoinTheHerd had quite an impact, through it, we are being called to be advocates for change only by circulating information resources about the topic among our networks.

It is all very do-able, so let’s save elephants from extinction.