At the turn of the 20th century, there were as many as ten million African elephants and about 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, there are an estimated 450,000 - 700,000 African elephants and between 35,000 - 40,000 wild Asian elephants. In this paper, we elaborate on the relevance of this keystone species to the forest ecosystem and to the maintenance of global biodiversity. We then concentrate on the events that have led to the fueling of ivory poaching in recent years. We discuss the Asian nations’ market for ivory and how the ivory business has thrived due to gaps and discrepancies in the domestic and international ivory law. We criticize the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES): Their poorly defined articles have led to loopholes in the convention itself and have resulted in countries exploiting these laws and abusing the principles of the convention. Finally, we focus on the way forward proposed by the nations and how CITES needs serious overhauling if we don’t want to lose this species forever.