A few anecdotal thoughts to share. Mostly just for ponderment and they do highlight some thoughts expressed in the last few pages of this thread. I'm not offering opinions just relaying actual happenings for the reader to form their own conclusions. Just some boots on the ground kinda stories. Best I can they will be in chronological order well cause thats how my head works.
1) Many years ago, late 80's early 90's I donated some money to a legal defense fund through the California Cattleman's Association. A water district in Fresno Co had decided to build a forty acre dirt water storage tank on their property. They got sideways of some green organization that decided that those 40 acres should be a refuge for an endangered flower of which there was one there on the forty acres. Through negotiation they came up with a solution. If the water district would set aside another forty acres where this plant was, as a refuge for the plant, the green outfit would allow them to build this forty acre storage tank. Interestingly they came south here to Kern Co, (nevermind that Kings Co and Tulare Co are between Kern Co and Fresno Co). They came to a ranch very near ours and using Eminent Domain decided they were gonna take forty acres in the very center of this ranch as their new flower preserve. It all came down to how endangered was this plant on the ranch. They hired a biologist to cover the ranch and count the flowers. He did. The flowers were suitably endangered here and this forty acres would make an excellent refuge. The rancher fought back and it went to court, hence the donations to the legal defense fund. The water district lost the case and had to pack their bags and go back to Fresno Co. Why? The rancher's son tailed the biologist, from the high ridges, horseback. He was able to establish that during his count the biologist never got out of his truck. He just drove around and counted flowers from the road. Then the ranchers were able to establish that the flower was very plentiful on their property and not endangered at all. Case dismissed. Many years later my son was running that very same ranch for a ranching company that had leased it. He said those flowers were all over the place but they were like working cowboys. Most of the time ya can't see em from the road!
2) A few years later my partner and I were assigned to drive around a biologist from the state (California). She was counting the Northern San Joaquin Kit Foxes. As they are pretty nocturnal it was a graveyard shift. Now it wasn't terrible duty as she was young, pretty and vivacious, just fun to be around. Our job was to drive her up and down I 5 and particularly in the vicinity of Highway 58 as someone had decided that, that line on the map delineated the Northern Kit Fox from his southern kin ( I wondered if they ever told the kit foxes that). Anyhoo we drove this gal up and down the Interstate all night. She did occasionally asked to stop at a particular arroyo or ditch and we would. She did get out but never left the interstate, peering over the fence into the darkness and using a portable spotlight she'd brought. We did see some Kit Foxes that night and she seemed satisfied with the deal. She asked us to take her back to her hotel in Bakersfield, oh bout 0430 or so and we did. I can tell ya there are miles and miles and miles of open country out there chock full of kit foxes ya can't see from the interstate. Kinda like working cowboys, ya can't see em from the road!
3) Many of my knives have gone on safari to Africa. I never have but my knives go. I was speaking to one customer shortly after the ivory ban under President Obama. At that time there was a ban already as far as sales etc, but if you went and hunted an elephant (most of the time conservationally necessary), you could still bring back the ivory personally. Couldn't sell it or do anything with it but you could bring it back and display it if that was your thing. Well that too was banned. Speaking with my customer about a new knife he relayed this story from his PH there in Africa. He had hunted many times with this PH. The PH owned a several hundred thousand acre ranch basically where he would take folks hunting. He had his own personal anti poaching force of 37 rangers. He had almost zero poaching of any kind of animal on his property and absolute zero on the elephants. The ban came and hunting completely dried up. An elephant hunt costs like $100,000 or more so a significant income loss was incurred by the PH. Many African countries also suffering these losses were forced to strip baby elephants from their mothers and sell them as their entire conservation efforts including anti poaching efforts were based off of hunting fees. The PH related to my customer that poaching of elephants was up 80% on his property. He no longer could afford to employ his 37 rangers and had to let all of them go and that was why poaching was up so much. He was in fact pretty sure that it was the rangers doing the poaching because as he said they still have to eat and feed their families. Elephant poaching up 80 percent because of the ban. Not down because of the ban.
4) Just before the ban here in California on using mammoth ivory and mammoth tooth (not ivory at all) and warthog tusks (far from endangered) etc. Had our booth set up at a roping. A lady from AZ was talking to me and asking me about making her a knife with a green mammoth tooth handle. I was explaining to her that I couldn't and if she was into green how bout one of my sheep horned handled knives that I use green liners on giving the sheephorn a green tint or hue in places. There was a gentleman listening intently to our conversation. When I was finished with the lady (she ended up buying a knife with sheephorn), he and I began to talk. He identified himself as the head of law enforcement for the state agency charged with enforcing the upcoming ban. His son was competing in the roping and her was here watching. Turned out he was already a customer as he had several of my knives. We spoke at length about the upcoming ban and how it would affect my business personally. He was shocked to learn that about 20 percent of the knives I made would now be banned. I asked him pointedly how my not using mammoth ivory was going to save elephants from being poached. He admitted that it was not, that there was no correlation obviously. It was simply used as a trumpet to sell the ban from the pulpit! The Oakland Tribune led the charge with headlines like Elephant Poaching? Not on Our Watch etc. but elephant ivory was already banned. This new ban was simply an enforcement tool to use against ivory smugglers and would not save elephants from being poached at all.
5) Some talk about CITES treaty and ll that. The certificate is only required when shipped from one signee of the treaty to another signee of the treaty. So in practical terms I can ship a knife with a cocobolo handle to someone in AZ. But I can't ship that same knife to Europe. While cocobolo, a true rosewood is not endangered, it is still on the list because it can look like woods that are on the list. So there's that.
6) Giraffe bone handled knives have kinda got a bad rap in the knife world. Because it looks very similar to mammoth ivory there were some unscrupulous types that were pawning giraffe bone off as mammoth ivory. I don't know the state of the population of giraffes these days but it wasn't at least in the last 20 years I've been in business ever a popular handle material because of this.
Anyhoo some thoughts this morning.
Bring on the Quickening
