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posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 24 2016, @12:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the tusk-tusk-tusk dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday October 24 2016, @06:18PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday October 24 2016, @06:18PM (#418232) Journal

    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.)

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