GAIA
Elephants,
ivory and science
I am not anti-elephant and I do not
endorse illegal poaching, but I do believe the current approach of
governments and animal preservation organizations will continue to fail
dismally.
Time magazine in its September 8 – 15, issue
has a full page ad on page 19 lamenting the slaughter of African elephants. It
states that 96 are killed each day!!! It
asks for your support at 96elephants.org.
Elephant tusk ivory is highly
prized as a soft material for ornate large and miniature carvings - traditional
crafts throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. Tusk ivory has
also long been used for piano keys, guitar and violin bows -- because of their
beauty, malleability and soft touch. Plastic is a poor substitute.
THE
DUAL PROBLEM
The current approach to protecting
African elephants in the wild has been a dismal failure while costing
multi-millions of dollars.
Poachers are rarely caught while more
and more rangers are hired to unsuccessfully patrol enormous, vast open
areas. And the poacher ‘bosses’ --who reap the great profits -- are
invisible and untouchable.
When poached tusks are found, they are
stored and then, multi-millions of dollars’ worth of ivory are piled high and
turned into a huge bonfire -- to be photographed or filmed: to show the world
such ill-gotten gains are not socially acceptable.
But this mass ivory destruction is
simply counter-productive and stupid.
It violates the first rule of
economics: supply and demand.
Solution
#1
Instead of destroying the ivory, it
should be sold through a UN-like international agency at either a controlled
rate or en masse -- to flood the marketplace and drop its market
price/value; thereby bankrupting the 'bosses' and supplying artisan and
craftsmen and guitar and piano and other manufacturers with a superior, natural
product, without the need to kill hundreds if not thousands of additional
elephants.
The ivory of dead elephants should also
be saved as well as any tusks that have broken off.
As for the rest of the dead elephants,
there is an African market for such bush meat, and their hides and other
elephant parts are also valuable and should not be left to rot.
At one time, hollowed out elephant legs
were popular as umbrella stands.
Solution
#2 -- which is much, much better
Apply modern breakthroughs in stem cell
cloning and create artificial, identical tusks in the laboratory -- for
legal sale.
Elephants would be saved, related government costs
eliminated, and 3,000 year old cultural traditions and skills preserved.
