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A recent survey of savanna elephant populations estimated that poachers killed 30,000 animals annually between 2007 and 2014, reducing the population to fewer than 400,000. Overall, researchers estimate that African elephant numbers have plummeted more than 95% over the past century.
[...] Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa—are expected to offer proposals for restarting a legal ivory trade. All argue that some elephant populations are healthy enough to be managed for ivory production. The proposals envision taking tusks from both animals that are intentionally killed—sometimes because they become nuisances, trampling crops and threatening people—and those that die naturally.
A study in Current Biology concludes that the demand for ivory far exceeds any sustainable harvest model and that there is a high risk that lifting the ivory ban will make things worse. The authors note that attempts must be made to reduce the demand for ivory:
At the same time, we cannot brush aside the fact that poaching has reached industrial scale fuelled by an increase in consumer demand driven by the rise of the middle class in countries like China. We must urgently work on finding ways to change consumer behavior as the only avenue by which we can resolve the ivory trade tragedy.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/legalizing-ivory-trade-wont-save-elephants-study-concludes
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31005-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_ivory
(Score: 4, Interesting) by riT-k0MA on Monday October 24 2016, @12:53PM
The problem with a total ban on ivory is it drives the price up. The price eventually becomes so high that the reward from poaching an elephant for it's ivory becomes irresistible.
Thus ivory is poached. The thought behind unbanning ivory is that black-market prices will drop to the point where it is no longer rewarding to illegally gather it.
There are giant stockpiles of ivory sitting in warehouses, waiting to be burned. If slowly released onto the market at a slightly lower price than the black market, not only could the ivory stockpiles become a lucrative source of income to a country, but poaching of elephants should drop drastically due to the lowered price of ivory.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 24 2016, @01:28PM
There are giant stockpiles of ivory sitting in warehouses, waiting to be burned. If slowly released onto the market at a slightly lower price than the black market, not only could the ivory stockpiles become a lucrative source of income to a country, but poaching of elephants should drop drastically due to the lowered price of ivory.
And when the warehouses are empty, poaching starts anew. Great plan.
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Monday October 24 2016, @01:41PM
The idea is that the stockpiles could be used to let the elephant population recover without being poached.
The problem with elephants is they tend to over-populate an area surprisingly rapidly. When that happens, they are culled.
A few decades ago you could buy canned elephant meat (as pet food) from Kruger Park [wikipedia.org].
If you're culling elephants regularly, one may as well sell their tusks. The proceeds can go to managing the game park more efficiently, benefiting everyone.
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Monday October 24 2016, @01:57PM
I should add that a female elephant's fertility's linked to fat levels. If a female elephant's fat levels drop below a certain level (I think it was 30%), she becomes temporarily infertile. Once fat levels reach or exceed the minimum amount, she becomes fertile again.
The problem with this is that an elephant will keep bearing young until she starves or dies. Starvation means the elephants have eaten everything they can find, almost creating a desert. (they will uproot a tree to get to the uppermost leaves).
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 24 2016, @03:17PM
Sounds like humans.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Monday October 24 2016, @04:58PM
If a female elephant's fat levels drop below a certain level (I think it was 30%), she becomes temporarily infertile.
Sounds like humans.
If anything I've seen the reverse at walmart.
I'll admit it could be simple orbital mechanics, the kids just cant break free of the gravity field.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @02:39PM
I take it that you didn't read TFA.
There have been sales of ivory stockpiles, which didn't stop the poaching, and the demand far outweighs any stockpiles. Furthermore, the amount of ivory that can be harvested from dead elephants and population culling is basically insignificant compared to the demand.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 24 2016, @03:09PM
This isn't like drugs where people can conjure up a near infinite supply of the stuff, the limit here is on the actual animals available to get the ivory from. Legalization isn't going to do anything about that supply. At least not in the positive direction. The demand has pretty much always exceeded demand except that in recent memory the ability to kill the animals has increased to the point where it's an existential threat to these species.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday October 24 2016, @04:30PM
This isn't like drugs where people can conjure up a near infinite supply of the stuff
False!
In fact its "easy" for low level criminals to make and pass off fraudulent ivory items to sell to low level dumb buyers. Imagine if a large government flooded the hell out of the illegal market with professionally manufactured fake ivory until the poachers can't make any money.
There's nothing really crucial that depends on ivory or depends on ivory being real, anyway. It doesn't go into human heart replacement valves or helicopter jet engines or whatever.
Another fun game to play is a 1000% tax on the sale of tested genuine ivory. Sure you can run that tusk or WTF under an electron microscope to see if its made of composite plastics or microscopic animal cells or run a carbon dating on it to see if its 70 million year old crude oil or 10 year old elephant, or even a DNA analysis, but if word gets out that its genuine the government will sieze (then burn) 10 times what you've scientifically certified. Now on the other hand sir if you'll just pencil whip this ebay item into "uh, I donno but it looks like ivory to me" then you'll get full government support and non-intervention and get away with it as long as fools think ivory is real and you can actually buy ivory on ebay or whatever. Just like you can't buy real food from Walmart or about the only thing you know about drug dealers is whatever percentage pure it is, the number it ain't is 100%.
A fun government job would be gray marketing the gray market. Oh they're selling ground up ivory pills to dumbasses for $40/bottle? We'll sell sugar capsules for $30/bottle until they're out of business and every penny earned goes to the "save the rhinos" foundation or some national park or WTF.
I was thinking about doing this as a startup business maybe a decade ago. Got nowhere and was too busy. Was gonna do this with Rhino horn, specifically, although I don't see any biochemical issue with ivory. As for the legal ramifications its kinda like airbnb or uber, if you don't like the laws just ignore them, get really big, then and it'll be all good.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday October 24 2016, @06:18PM
There's nothing really crucial that depends on ivory or depends on ivory being real, anyway. It doesn't go into human heart replacement valves or helicopter jet engines or whatever.
True, but perhaps the biggest problems are encountered by traveling classical musicians [washingtonpost.com]. Unlike most people who might collect an old piece of furniture or whatever containing ivory and just have it in their homes, musicians very frequently travel with instruments that are many decades or even centuries old, and they're a necessary part of their jobs.
In many cases, it's a small piece on the tip of an old violin bow (often less than a gram). Some woodwind instruments may have a small ivory parts too. It has been a huge headache for traveling musicians for the past few years, and after 2014 seizure of seven violin bows from a professional symphony orchestra touring from Budapest in 2014, a number of major European orchestras have questioned whether it's worthwhile to travel to the U.S. Thankfully, the regulations have eased up a bit with some changes this past summer, but it's still a headache that many professional musicians have to deal with on a regular basis if they travel internationally.
(Note that in most cases it's unnecessary for the ivory part of these instruments, bows, etc. to be "real," too. The problem is often that any futzing with the structure of an old instrument can have repercussions in how it functions acoustically. While you might be able to have an expert take the tiny ivory piece out of your 19th-century violin bow that cost thousands of dollars and replace it with the fake stuff, part of the reason you probably spent thousands on the old bow in the first place was because it had literally "stood the test of time" and functions well as-is.)
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 24 2016, @07:43PM
That wouldn't solve any of these problems. A black market would still exist and chances are it would still be filled with poached ivory and it probably wouldn't make the problem go away.
Also, you don't think that the rich folks buying a lot of this stuff can't find somebody that can tell the read deal? Poached products where there are no legal avenues to purchase aren't being bought by the poor and middle classes typically, they're being bought with people with sufficient money to be able to get it authenticated.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday October 24 2016, @07:19PM
I also heard a story from an econ professor in school, that two African countries took different steps to combat poaching: one had immediate death penalty for poachers and the other allowed people to harvest animals on their property. The country which instituted property rights had the better success curbing poaching because people knew the value of the animal, and would protect it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @08:55PM
The thought behind unbanning ivory is that black-market prices will drop to the point where it is no longer rewarding to illegally gather it.
There's not enough ivory produced by this method to do that. And once you have legal ivory on the market again, it makes it easier to sell poached ivory and reduces the cost of poaching ivory which increases the reward from poaching ivory. To have a large enough ivory source to make this work, you need an elephant farm with deliberately harvesting of elephants. I don't see anything shy of that working.