6 Tons of Seized Ivory Crushed
brianlux
Posts: 42,051
Wondering what your thoughts are on this. My hope is that the objective of this move, the idea that destroying these stockpiles will lessen consumer demand, will be successful. I'm not a violent person but the thought of throwing some of the poachers and ivory consumers into the rock crusher along with the ivory did pass through my mind.
http://news.yahoo.com/6-tons-seized-ivo ... 50863.html
6 tons of seized ivory crushed in Denver
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) — U.S. officials on Thursday destroyed more than 6 tons of confiscated ivory tusks, carvings and jewelry — the bulk of the U.S. "blood ivory" stockpile — and urged other nations to follow suit to fight a $10 billion global trade that slaughters tens of thousands of elephants each year.
Thousands of ivory items accumulated over the past 25 years were piled into a large pyramid-shaped mound, then dumped into a steel rock crusher that pulverized it all into dust and tiny chips at the National Wildlife Property Repository just north of Denver.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will donate the particles to a yet-to-be-determined museum for display.
"These stockpiles of ivory fuel the demand. We need to crush the stores of ivory worldwide," said agency director Dan Ashe. He said keeping stockpiles intact can feed consumer demand for illegal souvenirs and trinkets taken from slain elephants.
Before the crush, Fish and Wildlife officials showed off thousands of confiscated ivory tusks, statues, ceremonial bowls, masks and ornaments — a collection they said represented the killing of more than 2,000 adult elephants.
The items were seized from smugglers, traders and tourists at U.S. ports of entry after a global ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced a $1 million reward Wednesday for information leading to the dismantling of a Laos-based criminal syndicate, the Xaysavang Network, that Kerry said poaches elephants for ivory.
That group and others poach to fund narcotics, arms and human trafficking, the State Department said in a statement.
The message from Thursday's crush likely will reach consumers more than the faraway poachers and smugglers. Elephant poaching is at an all-time high, thanks in large part to U.S. demand and growing demand in Asia.
The British-based Born Free Foundation estimates poachers killed 32,000 elephants last year. It says black-market ivory sells for around $1,300 per pound.
Most elephants are killed in Africa, where there are about 300,000 African elephants left. There are an estimated 50,000 Asian elephants found from India to Vietnam.
The ivory being destroyed didn't include items legally imported or acquired before the 1989 global ban.
http://news.yahoo.com/6-tons-seized-ivo ... 50863.html
6 tons of seized ivory crushed in Denver
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) — U.S. officials on Thursday destroyed more than 6 tons of confiscated ivory tusks, carvings and jewelry — the bulk of the U.S. "blood ivory" stockpile — and urged other nations to follow suit to fight a $10 billion global trade that slaughters tens of thousands of elephants each year.
Thousands of ivory items accumulated over the past 25 years were piled into a large pyramid-shaped mound, then dumped into a steel rock crusher that pulverized it all into dust and tiny chips at the National Wildlife Property Repository just north of Denver.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will donate the particles to a yet-to-be-determined museum for display.
"These stockpiles of ivory fuel the demand. We need to crush the stores of ivory worldwide," said agency director Dan Ashe. He said keeping stockpiles intact can feed consumer demand for illegal souvenirs and trinkets taken from slain elephants.
Before the crush, Fish and Wildlife officials showed off thousands of confiscated ivory tusks, statues, ceremonial bowls, masks and ornaments — a collection they said represented the killing of more than 2,000 adult elephants.
The items were seized from smugglers, traders and tourists at U.S. ports of entry after a global ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced a $1 million reward Wednesday for information leading to the dismantling of a Laos-based criminal syndicate, the Xaysavang Network, that Kerry said poaches elephants for ivory.
That group and others poach to fund narcotics, arms and human trafficking, the State Department said in a statement.
The message from Thursday's crush likely will reach consumers more than the faraway poachers and smugglers. Elephant poaching is at an all-time high, thanks in large part to U.S. demand and growing demand in Asia.
The British-based Born Free Foundation estimates poachers killed 32,000 elephants last year. It says black-market ivory sells for around $1,300 per pound.
Most elephants are killed in Africa, where there are about 300,000 African elephants left. There are an estimated 50,000 Asian elephants found from India to Vietnam.
The ivory being destroyed didn't include items legally imported or acquired before the 1989 global ban.
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hmmmmm,,,so in order to lessen demand we are destroying supply? got it.
this seems like the kind of backwards thinking that usually happens in justice systems.
B, let's look at the drug trade, another illegal black market trade. If the authorities make it harder in an area to get a certain drug, what happens to the price and demand of that certain drug? The law of supply and demand still applies, and probably more so here. If poachers do it for the current price, what happens when that price goes up?
Making a big announcement that we have destroyed 6 tons of ivory is like announcing their is a gas shortage...what will those who want it do for more ivory?
Just a thought...when they confiscate things like this they cannot bring the elephants and rhinos back to life, but they could do some good with what they were killed for. Invite wildlife conservationists to an auction where 100% of the proceeds go towards protection against poaching. Although it would probably test the morality of a lot of wild life conservationists too much...
Also I think poachers should have their hands cut off...at least their fingers...can't really shoot a gun with no hands, and you can't hold a machete to chop off the tusks either...fucking creeps.
I hate this stuff...how can anyone look at an elephant that isn't trying to kill them and say "your tusks are so beautiful I must have them"
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
After reading the story about how there is less to go around, one would have to think the price and demand will have to go up.
I don't like the killing of elephants for the ivory, but I must say that I used to frequent a kind of flea market that was out of the way from any big city once upon a time and this little old lady had the coolest looking ivory trinkets for sale. My better half would always kick herself for being stuck between wanting to buy a few and knowing what was right to do. She never did buy any but still talks about them. Her dad was from South Africa, and granny had a ton of the ivory stuff to go around.
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
my solution: international treaties ... any country caught with these products are subject to heavy heavy fines (china) and those funds will help conservationists ... as for this stockpile ... i don't mind its destruction - i get the theory that it will raise demand but if this was some drug like cocaine - do you auction that stuff off? ...
no, they have a shit load of funding to fight that awesome war partly funded through confiscation/auctioning of things bought with drug money proceeds.
Conservation efforts are poorly funded and this could bring more exposure to their plight.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
But to be serious, they didn't destroy anything that was obtained before the 1989 global ban ... so would they not destroy coke if it was made before 1989? That the "what the 'eff, are we dumb?" of the whole situation.
You get someone to authenticate it and auction it off and then you can send a ton of Jeeps and bush-planes and radios and gear to Africa so that maybe in 2014, only 20,000 elephants are killed instead of 32,000+.
The 'demand' is what we need to address and Polaris gave some examples how we 'might' be able to combat it if we were ever so inclined.
But here we are- like minded people- talking about how wrong it is... and there are people that obviously couldn't give two shits about our attitude. Just like in the gun debates that display intensely oppositional attitudes, this subject yields two completely different kinds of people as well: one side thinks nothing of killing an exotic and beautiful animal so that they might carve something from its tusk... while another is horrified at the very idea.
We only see the two sides manifest themselves on the smaller scale: activists and conservation workers against poachers and consumers. The situation will never correct itself until a large scale movement occurs that essentially squashes the desire for ivory and the resulting trade practices.
Or the animal no longer roams the planet.
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
but there is the notion that this stuff doesn't belong in the open market ... especially when they were obtained illegally ... ultimately, the people who support the poaching and trade still get their hands on the stuff ... there are two sides to the demand variable ... the poachers who get it and the people who buy it ... the best way to eliminate the poachers is to eliminate the buyers ... not literally but figuratively ...
My thinking at first was very aligned with what you're saying here, Mike. A few thoughts occur, however- if the items are auctioned off, might not that keep the demand going? People might say, "Well it's so beautiful and I can legally procure it through an auction." And a lot of the money made in such an auction would have to go into the bureaucracy of providing documentation for legal ownership and so forth. And also, would making it legal to own through auction give people reason to justify a desire to own something made of ivory? It is, after all, quite beautiful. I remember when shops in San Francisco's China Town were filled with the stuff and it was beautiful to look at.
I asked my wife what are her thoughts and she got rather upset and said they should grind the bones of the poachers along with the ivory- an unusually harsh statement from someone who is generally much more mild mannered but a good illustration of how frustrating is the subject.
I'm sick at the thought that people kill these beautiful creatures for their own greed and/or superstitions.
By the same token, any argument about whether destroying it might add to demand instead of detracting from it is also moot. It really doesn't matter whether they destroyed it or not since otherwise it would just have sat in a warehouse collecting dust.
This talk of auctioning it off, what is effectively being proposed is the re-legalisation of ivory trading, otherwise they would not be able to do it. That's obviously unconscionable.
Which is why I said invite wildlife conservationists. IT isn't a great solution, and it would get destroyed by them I would guess, but it would raise money for stopping the ivory trade and awareness. I wouldn't want anyone to auction it to private citizens for display.
First point is a good point. I didn't really look at it that way. However, using the ivory that is confiscated to do something to try to save the beautiful animals it came from isn't the worst thing in the world, and I think there are better things to do than simply have a gov't agency destroy it with little fan fair. But I see your point and I think that less animals on the planet will have a much larger effect on the price than anything they could confiscate.
The second point isn't really the case in my example. As Jason pointed out, auctioning the right to destroy it seems like it could at least raise a little money. That is why I said invite wildlife conservationists, those folks not looking for a ivory cribbage board, but those wanting to ram a pair of ivory tusks up a poachers ass and down his throat to see if they can touch. A few million dollars to some of them is no big deal but could make a huge difference in the fight against poaching for the game officers in Africa.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Here, in this thread though, the idea of inflicting harm on poachers- in some very creative ways I might add- seems readily acceptable.
Interesting.
Auctioning the right to destroy it is one thing, but I thought you meant they simply auction it to conservationists to do whatever they see fit with it. Unless I have misunderstood your meaning?
The USA cannot do that, they do not have the legal right to auction it, ivory trading would need to be legalised in order for them to be able to sell it anyone, it is neither legal internationally nor in the USA itself. Obviously it is not reasonable to legalise it just so they can sell this one lot of ivory, nor should (or would) they flout international law on the subject, so destroying it seems like just as reasonable an option.
Well, hunting down ivory poachers is not exactly a practical course of action for most people here, so admonishing them for something they could not reasonably do seems rather pointless.
But if it makes you feel better, I absolutely condemn the notion that anybody should travel to Africa, seek out people who are illegally hunting elephants and chop their hands off. Absolutely.
And hanging the Boston bombers in the middle of town isn't a practical course of action either.
My comment wasn't offered to make me feel better: I presented it so that some might consider the consistency of their words. Surely you must have understood this.
Don't get the fact that I'm obviously opposed to poaching and poachers lost in this exchange.
So I can't talk for others, but you should judge me on the things I do say, rather than the things I don't.
I'm not really sure what you are getting at.
I haven't made any judgements- only an observation that I think is fair.
It's certainly fair to disagree with people wishing harm upon others, or advocating taking the law into their own hands if that what you think is the right thing to do.
It's certainly not fair to make assumptions about what people believe is acceptable, based on things they haven't said.
If your complaint is that others have advocated violence who have previously condemned it, then that is most definitely hypocritical. If you are suggesting that it is hypocrisy not to call people out for something every single time you see it happen, no that would be an absurd level of consistency to expect from someone on a message board. You can't even be sure that people have registered the comments you are referencing, let alone what they think about them. You'd just be making silly assumptions all over the place.
this emotion often happens to me. I think it might stem from the idea that people can ultimately defend themselves more than the animal, and there is usually very little consequence for killing an animal and taking parts of it for sale. fines, some minimal jail time, etc. to me the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
The justice system is a form of vengeance for some; with humans who kill animals, there really is no such thing. At least not anywhere near the same degree.
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In this case, the supply had already been diminished so the price on the street would have been adjusted, but the more scarce a wanted commodity is the higher the price...I mean, the more rare an animal gets the more the hands or teeth or balls cost for the weirdo who wants them...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan