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: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @12:42PM
of the poachers
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 24 2016, @01:24PM
You're proposing to stop the supply source of ivory - which I agree. I also propose to stop the demand for ivory, by educating the goddamn Chinese who think consuming it gives them a hard-on. It's a less immediate, but more sustainable solution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @02:11PM
Or flood the market with fake "ivory" which is doped with something that causes long-term erectile dysfunction.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Monday October 24 2016, @02:51PM
educating the goddamn Chinese who think consuming it gives them a hard-on.
How about just re-educate them to believe that some other garbage will give them a hard on or some other bull shit. Seriously traditional Chinese medicine has some really stupid things in it, bear bile, rino horn, swim bladders from some fish, a bunch of other crap I forget or don't know about so why not add in bull testicles, pig hove, lion fish, and what ever other crap we want to get rid of. I do the same thing with the Hmong I see fishing and keeping every shitty little fish they pull out. I tell them where they can go catch some big invasive fish and that they can take as many as they want and not get in trouble. By doing this they can go and catch all the Asian carp they can eat and hopefully limit their spread further up the Mississippi.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday October 24 2016, @03:56PM
Cane toads. Australian cane toads will give you a hard-on that lasts for hours. Spread the word.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tibman on Monday October 24 2016, @04:53PM
1/5 Stars: Penis is definitely bigger but i'd describe it as swollen or puffy and not hard. Don't buy from this dealer, it obviously isn't legit cane toad!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 24 2016, @04:59PM
Separating the Chinese from their superstitions is like separating American teenagers from their cellphones - you might make it happen in 2% of the population, but you'll never get them all.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @07:11PM
exactly. let international hunters into africa to hunt poachers. radio tag all park personnel. anyone not emitting the proper signal is fair game. double check park ranger's radio tag every day. pay a bounty for each skull.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:41AM
Get double benefit. Arrange special tour packages for KKK members, but tip the poachers off that they are on their way, and their base camp will be at coordinates XY on day Z.
May the best douchebags win the day.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(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.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 24 2016, @12:55PM
The law of supply and demand should solve this, no? Harvest at a sustainable rate and charge as much as the market will bear and supply should equal demand. Sounds like they're not charging enough. Take the harvest and auction it off three or four times a year and this should balance out very quickly.
Mind you, you'll need to start shooting poachers who would of course be selling outside the auctions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 24 2016, @01:20PM
The law of supply and demand should solve this, no? Harvest at a sustainable rate and charge as much as the market will bear and supply should equal demand.
The problem is that supply already meets demand, only it's through an illegal channel. Your legal trade will always be supplemented by the illegal one, it'll just drive the price down a bit for both, and certainly not enough to kill off poaching.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by jdavidb on Monday October 24 2016, @02:30PM
it'll just drive the price down a bit for both, and certainly not enough to kill off poaching
That would still be an improvement, and much more realistic than their proposal: "attempts must be made to reduce the demand for ivory." We can all see how effective it is to try to solve a problem by wishing for the demand to go down; just look at the drug war. You may as well wish for gravity to change.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @02:49PM
And if you read TFA, you might remember that the authors conclude that sustainable harvesting is not a realistic solution. The study was done in response to people claiming that sustainable harvesting would be a solution.
Sustainable harvesting could be part of a solution, but there are not enough elephants in existence to meet the demand. The 12 ton ivory burn in 1989 brought awareness to the problem and greatly reduced demand in Western countries, but a similar event would be unlikely to affect Chinese demand.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday October 24 2016, @03:12PM
Perhaps a hundred years ago when there were more animals for harvesting and a large price increase might have worked, but this isn't like drugs where the ingredients are mostly inexpensive and would be easily obtained without government interference.
Legalizing drugs probably would reduce the price considerably, but we don't have a problem with a shortage, we have a problem with too many people not giving a shit about the consequences of their actions rather than a possible future where nobody knows how to make drugs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 24 2016, @08:28PM
The problem with any legal trade is that it legitimizes poachers. With CITES schedule I, almost anyone in possession of ivory is automatically assumed guilty. Take that away and enforcement becomes a game of detecting forgery and other deceptions.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 24 2016, @01:35PM
Here's what you're missing: The Tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org]. It's an issue that's been studied since at least the 1830's.
In this case, the population of wild elephants isn't owned by anybody, and there's no specific price placed on killing them for their ivory. That means that what controls the supply is outside of the control of any individual supplier of ivory. And as the population of elephants starts dropping, all that any individual poacher can do is try to get as many of the remaining elephants for themselves as possible - if they don't shoot them, somebody else will, and then their industry is just as screwed. So what's needed is collective action on the part of the poachers to save the entire industry, but seeing as how everything is illegal with regards to the ivory trade, that will never happen.
A similar situation happened with the Atlantic lobster, where the population started dropping after the lobstermen started overfishing, and it took a government response and collective action on the part of everybody in the lobster industry to allow the population to recover. As you can imagine, that caused big challenges for the economies of Maine and North Carolina, but it saved the industry.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Monday October 24 2016, @01:57PM
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday October 24 2016, @04:57PM
Wiped out in '92. for a couple years boaters could buy cheap fishing boats in general new england area. Seriously fast collapse, from a real business in the 80s to its done, everyones unemployed. Water is empty, bye bye.
That was the "Atlantic cod" you might be thinking of the "Greenland" or "North Sea" cod which have been on the border of being wiped out for a decade or so. Would not be surprised to see a collapse.
Pacific stocks are super regulated and doing pretty well.
Genuine Atlantic Cod from my youth tasted a lot better than the junk from greenland and pacific sold today.
AFAIK the great lakes are for all practical purposes wiped. Old sailors will tell stories about having to navigate around nets and the weird buoy systems some nets were marked with and getting tangled but now a days you're incredibly unlikely to ever run across commercial great lakes fishing. However, it does exist at least on paper and there's a handful of boats still fishing, mostly for generic whitefish (aka cat food) and perch (eh, not bad). Used to be a major industry with accompanying canning factories up and down the coasts of the great lakes... all that is gone. Oh and lake michigan still has sturgeon, perhaps the ugliest weirdest fish people eat.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 24 2016, @03:24PM
Perhaps bovines could be genetically engineered to grow ivory.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday October 24 2016, @02:32PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @03:56PM
No, regulating effects cannot occur because this is frikin' Africa.
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday October 24 2016, @03:53PM
Harvest at a sustainable rate
Good luck getting Chinese who believe in "traditional" medicine to do this. They'd happily shoot the last elephant on Earth for its ivory
(Score: 3, Interesting) by t-3 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:42AM
Even if this doesn't produce enough ivory to curb demand, there is apparently big money in elephant meat [wikipedia.org] . Convince enough people that elephant ranching is good business and the problem might be solved.
(Score: 1) by tisI on Monday October 24 2016, @02:18PM
As an Alaskan,
If the Donald gets elected, we will gift him with a gem encrusted gold plated oosik as his official scepter.
That's kind of like ivory.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday October 24 2016, @05:40PM
It's also kind of like a penis; fitting since he's such a knob
(Score: 3, Informative) by wisnoskij on Monday October 24 2016, @03:45PM
This is wrong. It is easy to harvest tusks without killing the animal, this is done all the time. The Tusks do not grow back, but the animal can continue to run around having babies. And that is the definition of sustainable, there is no reason any amount of ivory harvesting should effect the population or its ability to reproduce. If poaching was not such an underground, secret, illegal thing, the elephant population would be surging right now.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 24 2016, @04:09PM
If that's true, then the government should run a corporate contract to harvest tusks for a small percentage of the profit under supervision. The surviving elephants won't be at risk and the harvesters will be able to operate in the open with a respectable "we save elephants from poachers while making loads of money off idiots with erectile dysfunction" job description.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday October 24 2016, @08:01PM
You are thinking of rhino horn, which is completely different from elephant ivory. I am not aware of any medical remedies using ivory at least, ivory's main use is decorative, from my understanding.
But that is another thing that could be farmed without killing the animal, and indeed would be by far the most profitable method to do if the harvesters were not criminals on the run from poacher-killers.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:37PM
But that is another thing that could be farmed without killing the animal, and indeed would be by far the most profitable method to do if the harvesters were not criminals on the run from poacher-killers.
Rhino is often "poached" by the owners themselves. It is illegal for a private rhino owner to sell his product, the horn, on the open market even though they can easily and sustainably be farmed for that purpose without harming the animals. A game farmer who wants to get into rhino farming is best off breeding rhino and having his own guys "poach" it while he turns a blind eye and takes a cut.
That is precisely what happens. As an example, take a poaching ring which were arrested and locked away with great fanfare in South Africa a year or two ago. They hired Thai prostitutes to go hunting in private South African game reserves. The hooker shoots a rhino, which is paid for, and gets a trophy to hang on her wall. Completely legal and sustainable hunting. She hands the trophy to her benefactors, who sell the horn on the black market. All of a sudden they're poachers.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:41AM
I remember reading that this had been done in some areas, under the theory that if the elephant has no ivory, there's no point shooting it, thus it will be protected from poachers. I don't know how well it worked.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by driven on Monday October 24 2016, @04:12PM
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/10/business-conservation [economist.com]
Excerpt:
One idea being suggested is to inject rhino horn with poison that could make those that consume it seriously ill. That is what a game reserve in South Africa has done. And the Humane Society International, another conservation group, has teamed up with the Vietnamese government to spread the word.
Although chances of getting poisoned are small, this could well deter buyers. Why would a wealthy businessman buy a luxury good that might risk poisoning a relative or important contact? Moreover, those who consume horn in the mistaken belief that it makes them well will now have to worry that it might make them very sick. The message to rich Vietnamese is that they should probably be looking for a new luxury product to convey status. How about a nice, vintage Chateau Lafite Rothchild? It certainly tastes better than keratin water.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedGreen on Monday October 24 2016, @04:45PM
Not quite the article I was searching for which mentioned millions of tons of it coming to the surface now, but apparently could put a large dent in the Elephant tusk trade if properly managed.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-08-24/mammoth-tusks-are-serving-cover-illegal-traffic-modern-day-elephant-ivory [pri.org]
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday October 24 2016, @05:50PM
I'm amazed there are enough preserved mammoths being found to even make this an issue. I thought they were pretty rare. Apparently they're just tripping over them in Siberia. Thanks, global warming!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @07:29PM
You apparently missed the memo: while it was "global cooling" in the 1990s, "global warming" in the 2000s, now it's "climate change". From now on, as long as the weather changes AT ALL, we'll be able to impose our taxes on human breat^W^W carbon dioxide. We've finally figured out how to charge for breathing air - thanks Total Recall!
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday October 24 2016, @07:44PM
Climate change is the more accurate term because, while global average temperature increases due to human activity (this is no longer controversial except among the willfully ignorant or the duplicitous), some areas will experience more extreme weather in the opposite direction. This is not a contradiction or a moving goalpost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @08:01PM
Ho ho ho, how I never been more willing to come back in the future and say "you were right, it was nonsense," even thou you make jest of serious situation. I want my children to grow up on a planet that can sustain them, not to have to live like street-shitters from the Third World, so while I know you are wrong I hope that you are not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:08AM
You apparently missed the memo: while it was "global cooling" in the 1990s, "global warming" in the 2000s, now it's "climate change".
IIRC, we started using "climate change" not because "global warming" was inaccurate, but because politicians insisted that it was alarmist and should not be used as it could, I dunno, scare people into doing something, I guess.
(Score: 2) by acp_sn on Monday October 24 2016, @06:34PM
create a synthetic ivory that is indistinguishable from the real thing
flood the market with it so that buyers can no longer trust any black market dealer, the price will drop to the point where poaching is no longer economical
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday October 24 2016, @07:23PM
Make it legal to sell fake ivory, and to thus defraud the customers.
Then prosecute sellers of real ivory HARD, with a few selected examples at differing levels of the business...including those financing the distribution. So they have a strong motivation to only deal in fake ivory.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.