An ongoing environmental disaster has not received appropriate attention from world leaders, including both Republican and Democratic American presidents and members of Congress in the United States. It is the slaughter of endangered animals.

Once they are gone in the wild, many can never be replaced.

President Barack Obama has ordered new curbs on the sale of ivory from endangered elephants.

And, according to The Associated Press, traffickers in ivory are laughing at him.

An AP reporter visiting San Francisco stores at which ivory is sold was assured the product – clearly from elephants – was everything but that. One seller insisted his ivory was from wooly mammoths.

Congress should take a new look at safeguards for endangered species and close loopholes such as those the California merchants use.

Time is running short to save some of the world’s most magnificent animals.