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China Says It Will Shut Down Ivory Trade By End of 2017 (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: China says it plans to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017 in a move designed to curb the mass slaughter of African elephants. The Chinese government will end the processing and selling of ivory and ivory products by the end of March as it phases out the legal trade, according to a statement released on Friday. China had previously announced it planned to shut down the commercial trade, which conservationists described as significant because China's vast, increasingly affluent consumer market drives much of the elephant poaching across Africa. China, which has supported an ivory-carving industry as part of its cultural heritage, said carvers will be encouraged to change their activities and work, for example, in the restoration of artifacts for museums. More efforts will be made to stop the illegal trade, the statement said. China has allowed trade in ivory acquired before a 1989 ban on the ivory trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which seeks to regulate the multi-billion-dollar trade in wild animals and plants. The number of Africa's savannah elephants dropped by about 30 percent from 2007 to 2014, to 352,000, because of poaching, according to a study published this year. Forest elephants, which are more difficult to count, are also under severe threat.
this is not news for nerds, stuff that matters
This will, of course, closely coincide with the extinction of African elephants and rhinos. No more stiff dicks or cured cancers in China after 2017.
You want to keep the elephants alive? Keep the poachers out?
Commercialize ivory. Make it a private market. Have companies make money selling ivory. Make those companies defend and protect their elephants.
For raising awareness on this important problem with your television commercials on elephants and shark fin soup (both funded by WildAid).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ex-rocket-yao-ming-aims-to-save-africas-elephants--with-china-campaign/2014/09/03/87ebbe2a-d3e1-4283-964e-8d87dea397d6_story.html?utm_term=.84e3a9405c5f
A couple years after that there wouldn't be a wild elephant left but only farmed/preserved ones. Something like that might work better in countries with stronger laws and less poverty, I cannot see it working well in Africa.
You are far too rational for /. Maybe one day this site will be broad-minded enough to entertain all ideas.
It's the only way we'll at least stem the tide of slaughter. Once people know they'll be dragged out into the street and shot in the head by merely having ivory in their possession the number of people willing to sell, and thus buy from poachers, will drop dramatically.
Also make wildlife preserves a shoot-first-ask-questions-later zone. Any human in a preserve not wearing a bright orange vest and gps locator is fair game for anybody; wildlife officers, hunters, tribesmen, bored civilians with guns mounted to drones...anybody.
The only way to protect these species is to eradicate the human vermin who pray on them.
They already did that before. That's why they almost went extinct and ivory trade had to be banned in the first place.
Defending and protecting elephants is not good for the bottom line.
I'll shut down smoking. Next year.
I don't give a gong about your 5-10-15 or 20 year plan. We'll see. China and Bezos are smoking the good shit...
Or, make a commercial market for poachers.
Sell the rights to hunters, charge them $50,000 a head to be able to track hunt and kill a poacher.
There will be more than enough psychopaths out there willing to pay.
With that kind of income money will be spent on high tech tracking equipment to find the poachers, and then hunting parties can be flown in the remove the problem
Commercialize ivory. Make it a private market. Have companies make money selling ivory.
A better solution would be to use genetic engineering to create fake ivory in factories, and use that to flood the market and push down prices.
You're a fucking idiot. If only you had some valuable bone structure or something worth driving to extinction...
"Unfettered capitalism is a cure-all! Ask anyone on Breitbart, regulation never helped anyone ever! Elephants are a commodity, the market will correct it!"
if farming elephants was practical they'd be doing it already. Ivory has been valuable for hundreds of years. What makes it profitable is that the elephant you kill was raised and fed in the wild. You didn't have to pay to feed it for 20-30 years while you waited for it's tusks to grow.
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I cannot see it working well in Africa.
It doesn't have to work in Africa. China can raise their own elephants. There are elephants in Yunnan, and a few millennia ago, they used to migrate as far north as the Yellow River Valley. The only problem is that Asiatic elephants have small tusks. But maybe they could import African elephants to Yunnan. The climate is not that different.
Even better would be to clone mammoths, and raise them in Siberia. The have enormous tusks, and there is plenty of unused tundra where they can graze. Also, mammoths have different DNA, so the tusks could be verified as non-elephant to prevent trafficking of poached ivory.
There are already any number of synthetic substitutes for Ivory.
Dove, Dial, Irish Spring...
US has long ago banned importation of ivory but those made it to the country before the ban are legal. You can legally buy ivory in the US and government can't stop you.
Perhaps you didn't read the article? Chinese has had a legal market. They also have been largest market. The countries that made it illegal have become smallest part of ivory trade. But hey, elephants, or your ideological fixations, tough choice I know.
Just convince people that elephants are soft and mushy
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There are actually large collections of ivory in several southern African countries. And they burned a whole lot recently.
If that ivory were sold, it would raise a lot of cash for looking after elephants. It would also reduce prices for ivory, and make poaching less attractive. Perhaps more importantly, it would make elephants of some value, which could compensate people for the damage they do to crops etc.
It keeps degrading. I'm getting sharp fumes (nitric oxide?) and low yields. Anyone out there help?
just like how the japanese only do "scientific" whaling
It was a private market. What part of "phases out the legal trade" is complicated?
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Zimbabwe sells wildlife to China secretly"
http://www.iol.co.za/news/afri...
I am out of words to describe this travesty. May China be judged, soon.
Thay makes the assumption that it's worth (economically) raising/protecting the elephants for their tusks.
It may or may not be, but it's definitely cheaper to just kill wild ones, cheaper enough that there are poachers and not farmers right now.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
As someone who lived in China, those posters did jack shit to raise awareness, it was beloved basketball star Yao Ming on TV telling people about the problem that finally raised awareness.
the payoffs will have to be MUCH bigger!
There are some very large Ivory markets in NYC. There's a lot of fake paperwork that says it's old pre-ban or Mammoth ivory. There was a bust back in September of millions of dollars of illegal ivory. It's really only the surface.
One thing Mao still gets credit for is wiping out the heroin and opium trade, in record time. The Red Army backed Communist Party took heroin users and their families and executed them publicly in the streets. Using was made a capital offense in all cases, no ifs ands or buts. I wouldn't trade democracy and social nuance for the efficacy of totalitarianism, but if China isn't democratizing anytime soon then to hell with the ivory buyers, post haste. Extinction is forever, and our generation will probably be remembered for hundreds of years for that one thing if we don't get a handle on it. http://www.revcom.us/a/china/o...
Gently reply
But at the end of the day it has to be cheaper than stalking and killing a forest elephant, and those don't have to be raised or housed.
Make those companies defend and protect their elephants.
And where do you think these elephants come from? Farm them now and maybe in 15-20 years you have a single suitable harvest which can produce a grand total of 2 tusks per animal. Then what?
These aren't chickens. They don't grow in a few months and then start crapping out endless products while rapidly multiplying. The reason that these animals are hunted rather than farmed is dictated by the economics of the trade in the first place.
I believe there is no misunderstanding of the current and near future situation. I believe the poster you address was suggesting that instead of a limited private market highly dependent on illegal poaching there could instead be a market open to more countries that was legal on the supply side as well. Instead of a twisted ban on a valuable substance the efforts could be directed to what the actual problem is...the killing of elephants. Elephants die at a natural rate. The elephant numbers under the current ban system are declining due to poaching. A legal though regulated market would allow for a maximization of elephant populations with herd management. It would be an international effort but would promise both maximized elephant health and prosperity along with maximizing ivory availability.
Does it need to be cheaper than mass graves for elephant poachers? Because I bet we could round up a decent-sized hunting crew. And a few volunteers with shovels.
Ohh, poaching ivory is bad, we've decided. Therefore, we've decided not to allow it to be sold.
But there's no hurry, we won't stop it for another year or so, allowing anyone who wants to buy it to stock up in the next year, and then they'll have an item that is no longer available.
it says so right in the wikipedia article. It's a health-recovery and reproduction-management "farm". It's basically a wild life preserve being called a farm. They put the elephants back into the wild when they're done.
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John Hume has a rhino farm like that. The governments won't let him sell the horn.
How about synthetic? Can we make it?
3D print it?
China is getting sloppy on making a new year resolution!
I understand the sentiment, but really, the insanely high price means new goons would pop up instantly to fill the power vacuum. You have to lower demand and protect the existing wild animals as much as is financially feasible. Keep in mind, in Africa, a lot of these animals actually live on private land, and private landowners (often running a managed hunting area) are basically at war with poachers 24/7/365. In other words, they already kind of do raise ivory, but poachers will brave their life (easy "profession" to die in) because the potential rewards are staggering. The money seems big even by US$ standards, now imagine that x 100-1000 purchasing power in their local economies.