Chip wrote:
Really, you equate a cow harvest with an elephant poaching because we are carnivores? Generally, when a cow is harvested, they use virtually everything. The meat is eaten, the hide is used, etc. When a poacher kills an elephant, they take the tusks and leave the carcass to rot. How is this similar?
Considering you collect ivory and have quite a large collection, I find your arguments to be a self serving justification.
See, people going all emotional when hearing "ivory", and forgetting every reason...
No, i do not collect ivory. I have a large collection of "Krong Krang", also called "Mahasanae", which can be translated as "charm amulets". They are mostly made of mixtures of earth, herbs, powdered medicinal vines, wood and occasionally human bone. A very few i own are made of ivory or elephant bone, sourced, as i said, from a carcass that has died of natural causes.
Before accusing me of something that simply isn't true, please ask and understand first what we are talking about.
And secondly, just because almost all parts of a cow get used makes killing a cow morally not one bit better than killing any other animal. Killing is killing - a life has been extinguished.
And back to the points i have made, which you have managed to completely ignore, my question to you is: are you just interested in being morally outraged, or are you interested into learning what preservation of species actually entails and how many complex issues such endeavors actually involve?
Part of that is you simply cannot separate issues such as human poverty as they are related to issues such as ivory. Creating sustainable preservation of species needs education and not simple outrage. Cultural issues play a large role as well. You may deem cultures that have a long history of ivory as "inferior", or "unenlightened", but such attitudes will never create any sort of awareness that is needed - it will just piss people off.
What needs to be done is finding solutions that entail for all sides acceptable compromises. That means the creation of markets of legal ivory from sustainable sources, be that mammoth ivory, or ivory from elephant carcasses that died of natural causes, or elephants that were selective and in controlled way hunted in areas where elephant herds have recuperated from the mass slaughter that has taken place before. This also means policies of poverty reduction, so that people do not have to resort to illegal poaching to feed their families. Also selling less weapons in the murky world market that feed wars in impoverished nations may help there too...
It also entails awareness building in the markets such as China and Japan, working with the governments of these countries, bring artisans working with ivory to source their material in legal markets. Ivory is an incredibly beautiful material that has been used in human art since the stone age. But that does not mean that elephants have to go extinct to obtain that material.
The demand and use of ivory is not going away, regardless what the US or Europe may say. It is simple as that. Either you can accept that fact, and try to work on realistic solutions before Elephants (and other species) are extinct, or you are just morally outraged, keep the illegal market running as it is, and this way contribute to the extinction of a species.
Also, i sense a lot of hypocrisy here in this discussion. Everybody here appreciates tea ware in wood fired kilns. That though does impact the environment as well. The amount of trees that have to be cut for a firing is quite enormous, and lets not talk about the carbon emissions...
Lets start now boycotting potters that do not use gas or electric kilns...
