E-Bay bans all ivory sales!

[CourseEight]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Guess what has happened to the price of ivory since the very wise CITES bans came into force?

Yeah, that's right:- same thing as happened to the price of alcohol during prohibition.

Want to push prices up?

BAN IT!!!

As for the protection of elephants, well, anyone notice beef cattle dying out?

Nope.

Why?

Because beef cattle have a use.

Since the ivory bans what has happened with poaching of ivory?

My $0.02:

This argument would seem to imply that the ban of ivory has in some way created additional incentive to kill elephants, and that if we treated elephants the same way we did cattle, we could have our elephants and *ahem* kill them too. Quite simply, if the market existed for this to be true, it would have been done. The fact is that ivory is not a necessity, and so has a much smaller market to sell too than food like beef. Further, the lack of domestication combined with the enormity of these animals would make it fiscally untenable to do so. Which is why animals such as these were hunted to near extinction in the first place: they are profitable enough to hunt, but not to farm. As for the cost increase in banned items, well, of course the cost increases, since the risk associated with the aquisition is greater. But the reason these bans work is that there is a much smaller percentage of people willing to take the larger risk associated with illegal activity.

There are reserves in Africa, I'm told, where the elephant population has grown to the point where it actually has to be controlled through hunting. The time may come when other elephant populations will be in a similar situation, and at that time these bans can be lifted (under strict hunting supervision). But the notion that the free market will somehow save the elephants on its own, or that elephants aren't worth saving if the market doesn't save them, simply doesn't hold water with me.