Illegal Ivory Trade Thriving In West Africa - BBC

[hatrack]

"A lively illegal trade in ivory is now flourishing in three populous states in West Africa, conservation groups say.
They found more ivory in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal than the countries' own elephant populations could produce. The wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and the global conservation group WWF say West Africa's vibrant ivory markets spur the poachers on.

They believe much of the ivory their teams found will have come from animals slaughtered by gangs in central Africa. Any international ivory trade must be sanctioned by Cites, the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Sidestepping the law

Domestic trade within a country is a matter of national legislation. Ivory Coast banned the trade in 1997, and it is supposed to be controlled by law in Senegal and Nigeria. But a report by Traffic and WWF says investigators found more than 4,000 kilogrammes of "illegal" ivory on public display in nine cities in the three countries."

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3314069.stm

[mmm]

1. We can't save the elephant, can't save the orang,

can't save the bonobo and won't save the tiger.

I still believe it's not a question of how we can make it succeed but of how we could possibly allow it to fail.
Designated man-killing cat hunter and naturalist Jim Corbett once proffered that a world without tigers would be a world not worth living in:
“The decline of the tiger will be the beginning of the end for man.”

We are at that crossroad now.

[Roy G Biv]

2. illegal ivory

I think the banning of the ivory trade is like the banning of marijuana - both situations create an illegal black market to try to meet demand.

Also, past history shows that when you hunt animals in the wild, there is always the possibility that the animal may become endangered or go extinct. But past history also shows that when animals are raised on legal, privately owned farms, there has NEVER been a case of the animal becoming endangered or going extcint.

Although I myself am a vegetarian, I do have the common sense to recognize that as long as there is a legal industry for beef, the cow will never go extinct.

Thus, if we legalized the ivory trade, and legalized private elephant farming, then there would no longer be any threat of the elephant going extinct.

Another comparison is to compare the passenger pigeon to the chicken. The passenger pigeon was hunted in the wild, and it went extinct. The chicken is legally raised on private farms, so it has no chance of going extinct.

Again, as a vegetarian, I would never purchase ivory. However, I do understand how things work in the real world. And farming is something that works in the real world.

[blindpig]

3. bs

elephants are totally unsuitable for domestic ivory production. The reproductive and growth rates are entirely to slow for ecomomic viability. Furthermore, as the, are the most intelligent herbivore, possibly sentient, it would be obscene to reduce them to a domestic herd in order to produce a vanity product. That opinion is derived from my experience as an elephant keeper at the Baltimore Zoo in the 70's.
And by the way, I am a carnivore.

[yellowcanine]

5. Very short sighted analysis

African elephants are wild animals. If you domesticate them, you may still have an elephant but it won't be the same critter as an African elephant - anymore than a Rhode Island Red is equivalent to its wild ancestors. The wild ancestors of chickens are extinct as are the wild ancestors of most domesticated animals (and many plants as well). Domestication doesn't slow down extinction rates, it speeds them up, mostly because of habitat destruction and loss of genetic diversity.

If we were able to strictly control the ivory trade, "harvesting" of wild elephant ivory might be a feasible solution. Unfortunately, ivory is like cash - once it has been separated from the animal and made into trinkets, it is impossible to tell whether it was harvested legitimately or not. There are no easy solutions to this problem.

[johnnybama]

4. slave trade

I think we should worry about the slave trade going on in africa, before we wory about the ivory trade