- Joined
- Jun 23, 2014
- Messages
- 6
(rest of post)
The widely dispersed myth that 35,000 elephants a year are killed by poachers is a bald faced lie. Since poaching began to pick up around 2008, the level of poaching never got anywhere near that number. CITES released in June of this year an update to numbers that have been consistent for years that poaching peaked in 2011 at 25,000 elephants, declined in 2012 to 22,000, and declined again in 2013 to 20,000. http://www.cites.org/eng/elephant_poaching_and_ivory_smuggling_figures_for_2013_released CITES credits increases in African Law enforcement for being a primary factor in the decline of poaching - something everyone can agree is a good idea!
The important thing about the declining poaching numbers is that, while the numbers of elephants poached exceeds anticipated natural replacement levels for animals, the level of poaching is dropping back closer to that level. There is still a need to fight poachers to protect long term interests of elephants, but the threat of extinction is being grossly exaggerated.
As for the claim that law enforcement agents can't tell different kinds of ivories apart or that they can't distinguish antiques from recently poached ivory, that, too is exaggeration. There are people on this forum who work with ivory who can explain this better than I can. While there are some cases, especially with very small quantities of ivory, like inlays, where distinguishing between ivory types is very difficult, but that's not the case when you're dealing with large amounts of ivory that would constitute a significant violation of the law. The bigger point is that focusing on an agent in a curio shop is disregarding all of the other ways law enforcement can prevent illegal ivory from entering the country. The best way is to stop it at the source and at key transit points. Even Born Free recently published a study (Ivory's Curse, April 2014) strongly urging enforcement authorities to focus on ports in Africa through which poached ivory must transit to get to the rest of the world. It's common sense.
The terrorist funding thing is also way overblown. The increase in militarized groups poaching elephants are local criminal gangs who got weapons from the Obama/Clinton escapade in Libya. These are bad guys, no doubt, but what do you expect poachers to be like? Al Shabaab, one of the "most genuine" terror groups, operates in countries without elephants and deals with much more lucrative crime than elephant ivory. You can read a lot more about the situation in the 106 page UNEP report "The Environmental Crime Crisis" found at http://grida.no/publications/rr/crime/
I've talked a lot about elephants and poaching, but let's focus on the United States. USFWS simply can't establish importation of illegal ivory is a major problem in the US - and that's because the problem is not significant. People love to point to the Victor Gordon case - a Philadelphia Antique dealer recently sentenced in New York. He collected ivory over many years and stopped importing around 2009 - well before peak years of poaching. He plead guilty so his side of the story isn't published, but reading between the lines in press accounts it looks like FWS seized all of his ivory, not just stuff imported from Africa, so it's really hard to tell what was illegally brought into the country vs what was legal. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ion-scratchoff-usf-ws-forest-elephants-gabon/ In just November 2013, USFWS put out a self congratulatory description of their investigation efforts, but they had to reach back to the beginning of this century to identify all of their cases. http://www.fws.gov/le/pdf/Elephant-Ivory-Investigations.pdf In September 2012, they came out and admitted that there was not a significant trade of illegal ivory into this country. http://www.fws.gov/international/pd...s-to-control-illegal-elephant-ivory-trade.pdf. Their story only changed after December 2013 when the President's Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking announced their jihad on Domestic Ivory.
I, like everyone who deals with antiques, knives, musical instruments, guns, art or anything else containing legal ivory, want to see elephants protected. Unfortunately, instead of turning legitimate dealers and collectors into allies, the US government has declared war on the innocent. This is stupid public policy. It's also bad for elephants, because the government is treating local African communities who are implementing sound conservation policies just as poorly. This is much more about politics and exploiting an emotional issue about which most people have been severely misinformed than it is about saving elephants in Africa.
The widely dispersed myth that 35,000 elephants a year are killed by poachers is a bald faced lie. Since poaching began to pick up around 2008, the level of poaching never got anywhere near that number. CITES released in June of this year an update to numbers that have been consistent for years that poaching peaked in 2011 at 25,000 elephants, declined in 2012 to 22,000, and declined again in 2013 to 20,000. http://www.cites.org/eng/elephant_poaching_and_ivory_smuggling_figures_for_2013_released CITES credits increases in African Law enforcement for being a primary factor in the decline of poaching - something everyone can agree is a good idea!
The important thing about the declining poaching numbers is that, while the numbers of elephants poached exceeds anticipated natural replacement levels for animals, the level of poaching is dropping back closer to that level. There is still a need to fight poachers to protect long term interests of elephants, but the threat of extinction is being grossly exaggerated.
As for the claim that law enforcement agents can't tell different kinds of ivories apart or that they can't distinguish antiques from recently poached ivory, that, too is exaggeration. There are people on this forum who work with ivory who can explain this better than I can. While there are some cases, especially with very small quantities of ivory, like inlays, where distinguishing between ivory types is very difficult, but that's not the case when you're dealing with large amounts of ivory that would constitute a significant violation of the law. The bigger point is that focusing on an agent in a curio shop is disregarding all of the other ways law enforcement can prevent illegal ivory from entering the country. The best way is to stop it at the source and at key transit points. Even Born Free recently published a study (Ivory's Curse, April 2014) strongly urging enforcement authorities to focus on ports in Africa through which poached ivory must transit to get to the rest of the world. It's common sense.
The terrorist funding thing is also way overblown. The increase in militarized groups poaching elephants are local criminal gangs who got weapons from the Obama/Clinton escapade in Libya. These are bad guys, no doubt, but what do you expect poachers to be like? Al Shabaab, one of the "most genuine" terror groups, operates in countries without elephants and deals with much more lucrative crime than elephant ivory. You can read a lot more about the situation in the 106 page UNEP report "The Environmental Crime Crisis" found at http://grida.no/publications/rr/crime/
I've talked a lot about elephants and poaching, but let's focus on the United States. USFWS simply can't establish importation of illegal ivory is a major problem in the US - and that's because the problem is not significant. People love to point to the Victor Gordon case - a Philadelphia Antique dealer recently sentenced in New York. He collected ivory over many years and stopped importing around 2009 - well before peak years of poaching. He plead guilty so his side of the story isn't published, but reading between the lines in press accounts it looks like FWS seized all of his ivory, not just stuff imported from Africa, so it's really hard to tell what was illegally brought into the country vs what was legal. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ion-scratchoff-usf-ws-forest-elephants-gabon/ In just November 2013, USFWS put out a self congratulatory description of their investigation efforts, but they had to reach back to the beginning of this century to identify all of their cases. http://www.fws.gov/le/pdf/Elephant-Ivory-Investigations.pdf In September 2012, they came out and admitted that there was not a significant trade of illegal ivory into this country. http://www.fws.gov/international/pd...s-to-control-illegal-elephant-ivory-trade.pdf. Their story only changed after December 2013 when the President's Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking announced their jihad on Domestic Ivory.
I, like everyone who deals with antiques, knives, musical instruments, guns, art or anything else containing legal ivory, want to see elephants protected. Unfortunately, instead of turning legitimate dealers and collectors into allies, the US government has declared war on the innocent. This is stupid public policy. It's also bad for elephants, because the government is treating local African communities who are implementing sound conservation policies just as poorly. This is much more about politics and exploiting an emotional issue about which most people have been severely misinformed than it is about saving elephants in Africa.
