3 days to save elephants

[miriam_e]

Elephants are highly intelligent and are one of the few animals that can recognise themselves in a mirror. They are social animals who experience great anguish when a member of their group is hurt or dies, they are known to make art, music, show compassion, and look after one another's young. Their long lifespan (they can live to more than 80 years) gives them extremely low birth rates and makes them very prone to extinction. In the wild, adult elephants have no natural enemies, except humans. We were wiping them off the face of the Earth until the international ban on ivory dried up most of the profit in killing them. Now Tanzania and Zambia want to lift the ban on ivory sales, which will open the channels for poachers again, even in countries that keep the ban.

Keep the ban on ivory.

We have a rapidly closing window of 3 days to make public opinion heard here.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/no_more_bloody_ivory_gg/

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Ivory has only been illegal in the last .... 30 years or so?
Like whaling, which only shut down in Australia in the late 1970s or early '80s, it was a thriving trade, and a lot of knick-knacks are still in the market.

[xxclovergrrlxx.livejournal.com]

ah, that makes sense i guess. although, it seems like it would be safer to just make the sale of ivory prohibited, no matter what. but i'm sure there's reasons for their policies.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

it seems like it would be safer to just make the sale of ivory prohibited,

That's a pretty big market for antiques you're jumping on, and a much larger black market you're starting. That's the main reason, anyway.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

But ivory is not like drugs. Add shame and a block on resale and there might be some residual black market which could never be entirely stamped out, but it should reduce it to almost zero.

I can imagine the price of antiques with ivory plummetting with such measures. It would be a terrific deterrent. After all, the biggest attraction of antiques is the resale value; most people buy them as an investment. If the couldn't be resold nobody would want to touch them and there would be a glut because everyone would want to offload them before the resale ban came into effect.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

But ivory is a fantastic medium in which to shape things, and has a substantial history.