No, you are misunderstanding reality.
Those old elephants with the biggest tusks have already passed their genes along.
They are going to die very shortly.
Banning legal ivory has made black market ivory much more expensive and lucrative for poachers.
Government mandated control of everything does not work well. It needs the feedback loops the market brings.
Remember: every animal and every human dies, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
All we can do is work to manage it, and only humans are capable of the management.
Nature does a much worse job.
We could go back and forth on this all day but my understanding is that the 1989 worldwide ban on ivory led to a rebound in elephant populations but the 2008 sell off of poached stockpiles (effects of the legal ivory sale) actually expanded the black market for ivory and led to more elephant poaching in Africa.
So trophy hunters prefer smaller tusks ? The loss of mature males has a profound effect on the entire herd. Elephants with large tusks are increasingly rare precisely because of heavy poaching, making them even more valuable to trophy hunters.
“o, you are misunderstanding reality.
Those old elephants with the biggest tusks have already passed their genes along.
They are going to die very shortly.
Banning legal ivory has made black market ivory much more expensive and lucrative for poachers.
Government mandated control of everything does not work well. It needs the feedback loops the market brings.
Remember: every animal and every human dies, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
All we can do is work to manage it, and only humans are capable of the management.
Nature does a much worse job. “
Exactly... Real world cause and effect. Many environmental concepts do the exact opposite of what they are designed to do in real world application with cause and effect. Aside from the fact that the cost of taking one legally permitted animal will fund much of the policing needed to prevent a hundred illegally poached animals from being taken. And fund improvements to an area for the better survival of the species in whole to prevent total extinction.
This reality has been successful for many many years now around the world. It started here with the Duck Stamp. One of the most successful environmental protection programs ever, and it set the model for most around the world. Hunters and hunting actually prevented many many species from going extinct. Without the funding from hunting they would have...