Hi AGM,
Hoo boy, gotta disagree with you on the elephants, sorry to draw you into a debate. I'll limit the argument to African elephants, although I believe that it also applies to Asian elephants as well.
Thing is, there are probably more elephants in the Congo rain forest than there are on the African plains (these are forest elephants, a different species than their savanna relatives). When I was getting my PhD in ecology, one of my fellow students was studying how elephants moved, and how this affected the distribution of a fairly common forest tree. The elephant at the trees' fruits, and dispersed the seeds in their dung. As these fruits were about the size of bowling balls and nearly as hard, elephants were the tree's major disperser.
In the African forest, there are a fair number of trees that are dispersed by elephants. Elephants also make many of the large trails in the forest, and they kill and eat some trees, as well as shrubs and grass. In short, if the elephants disappear from the forest, so do many of the tree species. Elephants are what have been called keystone species or ecosystem engineers. Remove the elephants, and the forest changes, just as if you overfish, you get a sea full of jellyfish.
I'm not going to end with an airy-fairy "gotta save everything, because everything's connected" speech, exactly. However, I will point out that one of the cheaper ways of saving a patch of forest might be to protect the elephants in it.
Getting back to the discussion at hand, the only conservation message I'd love to see this group espouse is this: "CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS." That's all.
I agree that ivory is a wonderful material. Is it worth a dead elephant? Perhaps to you, not to me. Is it worth having that elephant shot by some criminal gang for their own profit? You need to decide that too, because that's what we're talking about, in part. Cutting back the demand for ivory is one way to stop the trade.
We all focus on the weapons here, but these objects have ties into a broader community. It's worth being aware of those ties. It doesn't really matter whether we're talking about ivory for a keris handle, or whether we're wondering whether a friendship is worth more than a particular sword we're competing for. In ALL cases, we need to think about the consequences of our actions, and think about whether our swords are worth it or not. That's all, at least in my opinion.
F
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