Anti-Ivory Groups Take Aim at WA, IA & CA (Mammoth Included) + Fed Update

[RX-79G]

It is a ridiculous argument, and I'm not making it at all. I'm just pointing out that the reasoning is similar, yet one is fine, and the other is ridiculous, as you say.

I agree, the appeal is what makes it have value. There's no legislation that can remove that appeal, so there's no real way to ever completely devalue it. Value = demand = poaching and we go round and round.

I have no objection to the importation ban of ivory. If you already own it, and it is here, it should be a free market. I also do not believe that mammoth should fall under these same sanctions.

To address the loophole that it could create, you could easily make a register for preowned and existing ivory that's in the USA already. It's not as massive as a task as you would think. I could create a website tomorrow that would allow the end user to take a couple of pictures and write a description and submit it online, and receive an ID number. - Advertise this method, leave it open for a year or so, and than close it down.

The idea is that if it isn't able to be traded, it can't be monetarily valued or acquired, so the appeal dies with the owner. And with no trade, there is less discussion, books, videos, etc. When a country whose culture is so closely scrutinized by other nations as the US stops taking an interest in something, that has an effect. Doesn't matter if it is ivory or disco.

 

[not2sharp]

The idea is that if it isn't able to be traded, it can't be monetarily valued or acquired, so the appeal dies with the owner. And with no trade, there is less discussion, books, videos, etc. When a country whose culture is so closely scrutinized by other nations as the US stops taking an interest in something, that has an effect. Doesn't matter if it is ivory or disco.

Ivory has been used for thousands of years on a great many cultrally significant artifacts. It is like suggesting that a ban on canvas would have us forget the Mona Lisa. Our heritage is not going to go away because of emotional hysterics.

Ivory jar from King Tut's tomb.

Consider that it takes some 200,000 acres of land to grow a wild bull elephant. Given the choice between 1 commercially worthless animal and the potential agricultural value of that land it really becomes a no-brainer. To the locals the elephant is nothing more than a large and dangerous nuisance animal; worth preserving to about the same extent as rats in a N.Y.C. apartment.

n2s

 

[leghog]

Consider that it takes some 200,000 acres of land to grow a wild bull elephant. Given the choice between 1 commercially worthless animal and the potential agricultural value of that land it really becomes a no-brainer. To the locals the elephant is nothing more than a large and dangerous nuisance animal.

That would depend entirely on the individual local. Many are working to end poaching. It has cost some their very lives. Painting entire groups of people with just broad brushes rarely results in accurate claims about them.

 

[not2sharp]

That would depend entirely on the individual local. Many are working to end poaching. It has cost some their very lives. Painting entire groups of people with just broad brushes rarely results in accurate claims about them.

That would be the momentary influence of foreign dollars, but at the end of the day there is still more value in other uses for the land.

n2s

 

[leghog]

Rangers murdered by poachers. Displayed at Zakouma National Park in Chad. Photo by Kate Brooks.

 

[leghog]

Words from D. Chadwick --- “This much is certain: the richest wildlife communities in Africa are found neither in pure woodlands nor in pure savannas, but in areas where the two general types of habitat meet and become interspersed with each other. Elephants are one of the most important agents influencing the dynamics of that mixture, and their activities generally increase the overall biological diversity of a region. Conserving elephants, then, becomes much more than an issue about how to protect a single great species. It is about protecting one of the forces that shapes ecosystems and helps sustain the wealth of wildlife found across much of the continent. It is about saving the creative power of nature.”

http://www.soselephants.org/about_elephants.html

 

[leghog]

Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...CVTJgovGbXc8YtMEcfsXB6Q&bvm=bv.84349003,d.aWw

 

[22-rimfire]

That would depend entirely on the individual local. Many are working to end poaching. It has cost some their very lives. Painting entire groups of people with just broad brushes rarely results in accurate claims about them.

That is true, but I bet the acreage is quite large if you compare it to a beef cow. I imagine elephants are eating machines. Since they are a part of the ecosystem they reside in, I am sure that their impact is felt in both a positive and negative fashion relative to people and their land uses.

 

[leghog]

"...and their (elephant's) activities generally increase the overall biological diversity of a region."

 

[RX-79G]

Ivory has been used for thousands of years on a great many cultrally significant artifacts. It is like suggesting that a ban on canvas would have us forget the Mona Lisa. Our heritage is not going to go away because of emotional hysterics.

Ivory jar from King Tut's tomb.

Consider that it takes some 200,000 acres of land to grow a wild bull elephant. Given the choice between 1 commercially worthless animal and the potential agricultural value of that land it really becomes a no-brainer. To the locals the elephant is nothing more than a large and dangerous nuisance animal; worth preserving to about the same extent as rats in a N.Y.C. apartment.

n2s

Old artifacts, whether they are made of ivory or dung, will always be significant. That doesn't have a lot to do with selecting materials for new do-dads.

The bronze age lasted 2000 years, yet no one is clamoring for knife made of the stuff.


And elephants aren't the only animal that has to go to convert to farmland. Pretty much all the animals have to go, along with the trees and plants. That's why the Amazon is becoming more "useful" at a rate of 1,443,834 acres a year.

 

[leghog]

And elephants aren't the only animal that has to go to convert to farmland. Pretty much all the animals have to go, along with the trees and plants. That's why the Amazon is becoming more "useful" at a rate of 1,443,834 acres a year.

And that's like living under an oxygen tent while you reach out and slowly turn the oxygen valve closed.

 

[not2sharp]

And that's like living under an oxygen tent while you reach out and slowly turn the oxygen valve closed.

Are you suggesting that crops grow without photosysthesis?

n2s

 

[leghog]

Are you suggesting that crops grow without photosysthesis?

n2s

Take just a moment and think about your question in the context of what it was in reply to.

 

[B34NS]

Our F&W agents are very good, not much gets by them. I know this from personal experience.

On one occasion a customer bought three ancient walrus ivory handle sections from me. They weighed less than a pound altogether. They fit into a small USPS flat rate shipping box. The guy gave me a New York address but from something he said in his emails, it sounded like he was overseas. So I told him if the ivory was going overseas he would need a CITES permit. He assured me he was in the US. I shipped the box to his address and a few days later I got a call from a USF&W agent in New York. He told me the address I was given was a forwarding address, the guy lives in Turkey. If I had been complicit in it, if I had known the box was headed to Turkey, I would have been on the hook for it. The point is he got caught with a very small amount.

Most of us have a house in their neighborhood that everyone suspects might be dealing in illicit drugs. People report it, you know it's going on, but nothing happens. They go on for years that way.

It's not the same with people doing shady stuff with ivory. I'm talking walrus ivory here because, again, there's not enough elephant ivory around to base any assertions on. In all the years I have been dealing with ivory, I have suspected there were a couple of people pulling some unsavory things with it. In this case, selling fresh walrus ivory as pre-act ivory. They got caught within just a few weeks. They paid fines and went to jail.

Our fish and game guys are good, they are sneaky and they are committed, persistent, tenacious . They are scary. I say they should be.

I have a lot of confidence in them. You should too.

Being a CA native I have the utmost respect for our CA Fish and Game wardens. Their job is tireless, now chasing illegal cartel grow ops, their subsequent poaching and pollution of natural resources. They are tasked with quite a bit as is, and to my knowledge we only have about 330 for the entire state. Now they will be tasked with this unless they eventually merge with the highway patrol as they have talked about in the past, not sure who would enforce in that case.

 

[not2sharp]

Take just a moment and think about your question in the context of what it was in reply to.

Would that be a yes or a no?

n2s

 

[leghog]

Would that be a yes or a no?

n2s

It would be a case of the Amazon "becoming more "useful" at a rate of 1,443,834 acres a year" being akin to "living under an oxygen tent while you reach out and slowly turn the oxygen valve closed.” Figure it out.

 

[RedLynx]

Would that be a yes or a no?

n2s

Translation re: leghog if I read him correctly: We are slowly choosing to (by turning the valve closed) to kill ourselves by fundamentally changing the landscape (oxygen tent) around us.

I could be wrong.

 

[22-rimfire]

Translation re: leghog if I read him correctly: We are slowly choosing to (by turning the valve closed) to kill ourselves by fundamentally changing the landscape (oxygen tent) around us.

I could be wrong.

Topics like the rain forests (preservation), African Elephants, nuclear proliferation, terrorists, wars, and so forth lend credance to the "one world government" approach.

 

[RedLynx]

Topics like the rain forests (preservation), African Elephants, nuclear proliferation, terrorists, wars, and so forth lend credance to the "one world government" approach.

I haven't much considered the one world government in hardly any issue, but you could very well be right. I very much hope it never happens. People within each nation are unhappy enough without potentially making half the world unhappy with its government.

I also enjoy the ways different governments work. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. Always interesting to study.

 

[RX-79G]

Topics like the rain forests (preservation), African Elephants, nuclear proliferation, terrorists, wars, and so forth lend credance to the "one world government" approach.

Yeah! Anything that may sound even vaguely like a departure from bruised knuckle industrial revolution landed gentry values must be morally bankrupt crypto-apocalypse cultist Commie-speak.

I'm uncertain why no one is lobbying to bring jobs to Africa (with white corporate ownership!) by building elephant-to-dog food processing plants, which after 6 months will solve the endangered ivory problem.

Who is looking out for Wall Street?!!!!