
How World's Largest Legal Ivory Market Fuels Demand for Illegal Ivory - adamnemecek
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/legal-loopholes-fuel-ivory-smuggling-in-hong-kong/
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adamnemecek
If you live in Washington state, please support Initiative 1401
([http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org](http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org),
[http://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Animal_Trafficking,_Initia...](http://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Animal_Trafficking,_Initiative_1401_\(2015\)))
on the November state ballot (you have until Nov. 3 to submit your ballot).
This initiative will help with reducing the amount of illegal wildlife
products coming to the US. Most of these products come to the US from Asia so
ports in Washington state are a prime destination for the ships smuggling
these products. California has recently passed a similar law.

~~~
wtbob
I'll be an opposing voice: please vote against Initiative 1401, which alienate
the property of those who already own such items, and further reduces the
incentives for those who live near such animals to farm them, rather than to
poach them.

Elephants are endangered because they are not owned; cattle, for example, are
not endangered because the demand for them is profitable. The right thing to
do, if one wishes to preserve endangered species, is to make it possible for
people to legally raise, own and harvest elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers and
the like.

~~~
danpat
This is an unfortunate truth.

I suddenly found myself finding big-game hunting a whole lot less morally
repugnant when I realized that the big money that goes into it is very much
used to keep many species alive. Operators of paid hunting areas have a very
strongly vested interest in keeping their revenue stream going, and thus, in
keeping viable populations around.

I am not pro-hunting by any means, but given a world where wildlife is
hopelessly outmatched by man for resource competition, the only way to keep
endangered species populated is to harness some aspect of humanity to fight
for their preservation in ways that matter. Paid big-game hunting and animal
cultivation _is_ an effective way to do that and should be done more.

The conflict between man and wildlife is one-sided enough that blanket
"protection" is not sufficient to save many animal populations. They need
active cultivation and encouragement if they're not to be wiped out through
attrition (via illegal poaching, loss of habitat, etc). Simply making it
_more_ illegal isn't going to prevent that.

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adamnemecek
This works nicely in theory, but (just like with other humanitarian efforts in
the region) there is no way of ensuring that the money the hunters pay
actually ends up funding conservation efforts and not some official's new car.

This is the reason why the United States Wildlife Service has imposed a
moratorium on imports of all hunting trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe. You
can read more about it here [http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/questions-
and-answers-s...](http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/questions-and-answers-
suspension-of-elephant-sport-hunted-trophies.pdf)

There is nothing to indicate that the situation is dramatically different in
other countries.

Also your argument doesn't explain why the populations of many of the species
protected by Initiative 1401 have been declining. If what you are saying
actually works in practice, the populations should have been increasing.

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theOnliest
A colleague of mine ordered a Steinway grand piano from Hamburg with an ivory
keyboard (legally made in Germany). He went through a long process of trying
to get it into the US (including a few phone calls to the Secretary of the
Interior), but there's an absolute ban on importing ivory to the US. In the
end, he had to get a plastic keyboard made for the piano before it could be
shipped here; the original ivory keyboard is in a closet in his mother's house
in Berlin.

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jbrackett
"...but there's an absolute ban on importing ivory to the US."

This is not true even for African Elephant ivory, at least not yet. [1] There
is also legal ivory trade in Mammoth and other animals such as wart hog that
can easily be found at gem shows, knife and gun shows, etc.

I talked to a guy from the Ukraine at a knife show who was selling Mammoth
tusks recovered from Russia and apparently had quite a time at the airport but
he was able to bring in his supplies for sale.

[1] [http://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-
ban-...](http://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-ban-
questions-and-answers.html)

~~~
theOnliest
Fair enough. (I hadn't actually looked up the statutes; I just believed him
based on all of the hoops he jumped through to try to do it.) There does
appear to be a ban on commercial imports; even though the ivory in question
was legally sourced and sold in Germany, he can't get it into the US.

(Though this was probably 15 years ago...it looks like the law might have
changed and he could get his keyboard now!)

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joedavison
The headline of this article is misleading. Markets don't 'fuel' demand. They
match existing demand with supply. The demand comes first, and exists in the
mind of those who want to buy ivory (or drugs, or whatever the case may be).

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danharaj
If there is demand for legal ivory, and the market supplies legal ivory but
allows illegal ivory to be laundered into legal ivory, then the presence of
the legal ivory market indeed does fuel demand for illegal ivory: The supply
side of the legal ivory market is the demand side of the illegal ivory
'market'.

Markets are not static entities that exist on top of some underlying substrate
of supply and demand. Supply and demand change according to market structures.

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ngoede
Yeah, also the big difference it seems to me compared to say the idea of
legalizing drugs is that this is a market of theoretically finite supply.
Therefore, as the supply shrinks it increases the incentive to find other
sources. This is in contrast to a legal drug market which would include legal
production and therefore, in theory, crowd out the illegal supply.

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legulere
When I read the title I first thought about mammoth ivory, which is another
kind of legal ivory. I still find it hard to believe that so much mammoth
ivory can be found and wonder wether if it is also used as a way to sell
poached ivory.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That's actually mentioned in the OP at one point: elephant ivory is sometimes
passed off as mammoth ivory since the latter is easier to take out of the
country.

