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Just to be clear: trading ivory is illegal.

What message would the Kenyan authorities be sending out if they were to sell this ivory to help finance anti-poaching measures? "Ok you guys who are willing to pay huge sums of money to the poachers to kill our elephants -- we'll let you have some of this, and because we're the government it will be legitimate."

No. It's not legitimate, and the government should not make it legitimate.

IMO, the only condition for allowing its sale would be if it is laced with cyanide such that every greedy b*st*rd who wants to get a slice of the action dies a slow and painful death.
 
Glad they are burning it! I think it took 5+ pages of posting, with lots of anger on both sides of the subject the last time ivory got brought up.
 
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But stop and think, the animals sacrificed already and this product is there is it not ashame to just burn it. I see both sides but something else has to be able to be done. :confused:
 
It's the right thing to do.

If it did become a one time legal sell off wouldn't that just increase the market demand by introducing new buyers to the product? Not to mention more poached stuff being filtered into the market among the newly legal batch.
Burn all poachers and those trading and buying poached game products of any kind, including trees.
 
Pete I'm glad to see you added trees to the list. If they're equal are you saying stop all the sales of all wood because some abuse it? I strongly agree with your last sentence but I don't see why everyone needs to be punished. Law enforcement ceases everything envolved with crimes and uses vehicles and other thing to help the department. So what's the difference with anything else. If there's not a legit ivory trade then make one. I don't look at it like making a drug bust and selling the drugs. Drugs are a problem so they need to be destroyed. Ivory not a problem it's the way it's harvested. Therefore sell the ivory and use the money to fix the problem.
 
Burning 105 tons leaves 105 tons of demand unfilled and the prices correspondingly higher.

I don't see how this works to protect Elephants from illegal ivory trade.
 
Burning 105 tons leaves 105 tons of demand unfilled and the prices correspondingly higher.

I don't see how this works to protect Elephants from illegal ivory trade.

The 105 tons of demand is the issue. As long as people want to use rare animal parts, there is demand. Take it out of the supply chain to limit a market.
 
All the materials in the world to make pens out of and your pissed you can't make pens out of Ivory? Why do you want ANY part in killing such majestic animals? If you can't see that the true waste was the loss of the Elephant well.....
 
The only way to stop the ivory trade is to show that the trade has ended. I.e. No legitimate ivory for sale, ever.

Burn the lot of it, and keep elephants alive by getting across the idea that ivory is not on the market. If it's not burned, it's going to find its way into the black market...and illegal ivory sales fund terrorism as well.

The trade needs to end. The ivory that has been illegally poached should not be considered commercially available. I think Kenya should be applauded for making the smart call.
 
That doesn't sound like enough to satisfy the black market demand so it would just be making the government complicit in the sale of the product from illegal hunting of animals. They have to burn it, but boy wont that smell horrible when their burning it!
 
I can see a reason to use it instead of burning it. The animals life has already been lost but what is left behind can still be used for something. Use it in museums, restoration projects, habitat fund raising, etc.

Allow the animals life to be memorialized in some fashion. To burn it all would be a tragedy upon a tragedy.

I like metal detecting and a similar line of thinking is seen in Bureau of Land Management areas, historic preserve rivers etc. These organizations come in, declare entire areas off limits to anyone looking for artifacts and they have no intentions of removing them themselves. So instead of an object being seen again, restored, etc, the past is left to rot in the ground. It's a wasteful idea all around.
 
If it did become a one time legal sell off wouldn't that just increase the market demand by introducing new buyers to the product? Not to mention more poached stuff being filtered into the market among the newly legal batch.
Burn all poachers and those trading and buying poached game products of any kind, including trees.


Why not just shoot them,or do they have to be burnt at the stake?

Speaking from the level of ignorance,why are some animals considered more important than others or special so to speak?Is it because they aren't local,domesticated,seen everyday by the thousands like in feed lots?Is it because they aren't kept in homes as pets by millions of people?What is it about them that they should be treated differently?
 
If it did become a one time legal sell off wouldn't that just increase the market demand by introducing new buyers to the product? Not to mention more poached stuff being filtered into the market among the newly legal batch.
Burn all poachers and those trading and buying poached game products of any kind, including trees.


Why not just shoot them,or do they have to be burnt at the stake?

Speaking from the level of ignorance,why are some animals considered more important than others or special so to speak?Is it because they aren't local,domesticated,seen everyday by the thousands like in feed lots?Is it because they aren't kept in homes as pets by millions of people?What is it about them that they should be treated differently?

Why not use the poacher's bones to make pens? That's if we really need rare animal parts for pens, that is.
 
I bet if Jeffry Dalmer had made pens he might have used his victims.Probably could have even used their names as a selling point.Of course he would have just said the bone was from cows or something.
 
We all agree poaching is not a good thing and there are many who can make the same arguments for thinning herds of deer and bears. Not what is in question here in my mind. Ivory will always be available because elephants die of natural causes too. How many animals are killed each year for those fur coats.

What is sensless is to not use this stock piled ivory for a greater good. The money could feed millions it could help famished areas. It could build infrastructure in ruined areas. Of course the control of if it would not be an easy thing. But the animals died and their deaths no matter how it happened can have a helpful end. To me two wrongs do not make a right. If controlling poaching is so easy why is it we can't stop drug trafficking?? By burning this will not stop poaching. How many more times must they need to do this to stop it?? Better policing is what is needed and stop the payoffs.
 
Burning 105 tons leaves 105 tons of demand unfilled and the prices correspondingly higher.

I don't see how this works to protect Elephants from illegal ivory trade.

The 105 tons of demand is the issue. As long as people want to use rare animal parts, there is demand. Take it out of the supply chain to limit a market.

I agree with you
 
There will always be a demand for most everything. Therefore there will always be a black market for those to profit from those who can't or don't want to follow the laws. I don't understand why we punish everyone rather than just the ones breaking the law. If the punishment exceeds the benifit from breaking the law I think that would make people think twice about breaking it. Then the problem is that "They " say the punishment doesn't fit the crime. We don't need to be fair we need to persuade some to do what's right. I think this is the root of the problem and in this instance it's how to get the funds and backing to get it done.
 
My idea to cut down on poaching is to find some type of dye that would permanently color the tusks of living elephants (or rhinos, hippos, whatever) and make the ivory unusable. Make it pink or purple or anything that would mark it as poached. It wouldn't take long for poachers to learn that the ivory was useless and that no one would buy it. Maybe sounds weird but maybe it would work. Unless the elephant females wouldn't mate with pink tasked males!! My 2 cents, worth exactly what you paid for it.
 
This is kind of a shocking post. Why would anyone here want to make anything out of an illegally harvested material that is also responsible for driving a species to extinction? Why not club seals, eat whale meat, cast eagle beaks and feathers in acrylic or turn a clanswilliam cedar blank? Poaching and over harvesting of any kind is despicable and not $1 should be made on any material taken from the activity.

Yes, in this case the animal already died. But selling the fruits of illegal harvest only benefits the poachers, expands the market and doesn't fund the hungry, needy or the poor. Many of the furs worn today are taken by quota to ensure survival of the species, just like dear, turkey, crab and fish. There is no qouta for animal ivory tusks because the species is endangered and rapidly disappearing. Be it elephant or rhinos, no one should benefit from seized materials of these animals. Burn it, burn it all.
 
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