Posted on 08/22/2014 8:19:28 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
It was quite a spectacle. In November 2013, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City had an enormous, spiky display of tons and tons of elephant tusks and ornately carved ivory icons and knickknacks.
Some were aged and discolored; others gleamed exquisitely, fit for long-ago king.
Then, the feds smashed the whole pile — six tons in total — into bits.
From the tusks to the trinkets, the ivory had been seized over the past two decades by U.S. customs and other authorities and piled up here in Colorado. The pulverizing of the stockpile was to draw attention to the illegal trade of elephant tusks, and to signal that America was taking the ivory business more seriously.
The estimated $10 billion worldwide ivory market is a wildlife disaster, with the brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of endangered elephants and rhinos each year. The money generated from such activity is linked to human trafficking, illicit arms deals and terrorism.
The event was not without its controversy: Some thought it to be wasteful, since the relics were from animals that had already been killed, some a long time ago. Others claimed that putting the items back into the market would dilute the value of new ivory and relax the demand for more criminal slaughter.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycamera.com ...
Teens' Bagpipes Seized At U.S. Border Crossing For Ivory Pieces
U.S. prohibits importing ivory taken after 1976. Even though the boys had certificates showing their ivory is older — Campbell's pipes date to 1936 — U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized the pipes in Highgate Springs, Vermont. Well, not all of them: The boys took every other part possible and left the ivory with Border Patrol so nobody else could make a full set out of the parts.
Those kids were lucky their bagpipes weren't smashed to smithereens - with no compensation, of course.
And yes, create a shortage where there is a market, the price soars and the poachers become more brazen.
I was raised in the Midwest, and we were brought up that if you kill it, you better eat it. You can save something like the head for a trophy, but you didn’t hunt for trophies.
It’s like the old joke they tell about raising hogs on the farm in the old days - ‘we used everything but the squeal’. That’s they way it should be. Slaughtering animals should be for the purposes of keeping people fed and clothed (at least back in the days when there were no synthetics).
Killing animals for things like ivory, for vanity and decoration and ornaments, while leaving the animal to rot, is an unacceptable travesty.
When elephants and other “African Big Game” are hunted legally, the meat is eaten by the locals ... it’s part of the deal. Bwana pays a boatload of money for the privilege of shooting the beast, the locals get a feast. And the money.
Boulder Dementia Syndrome strikes again.
I doubt the poachers do that. Now if they’re managed or husbanded and the parts are used, that I have less problem with. But just decimating wild herds for tusks or feathers or other vanity items I have no use for.
Poachers should be shot on sight.
No, they don't. That's the problem. The herds aren't managed, the resources aren't used properly (or at all), and only a bunch of total scumbags benefit.
A legal (client) hunter goes out with a tracker, guide, professional hunter to track down a particular animal that the professionals have selected for improvement of the herd, and to kill that particular animal. They end up using all the usable parts of the beast.
Poachers kill as many animals as they can, with no thought to the benefit of the herd, and leave the meat to rot. They're scumbags.
They seem to take pride in it.
And tusks get too long, and need to be trimmed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDU3qgdUXnI
Destroying art.
No, just have a letter from my elderly mother that it was purchased in such and such a place in such and such year. That should work.
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