Kenya burns vast piles of elephant tusks as it seeks ban on trade

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

Sat Apr 30, 2016 2:07pm EDT
NAIROBI


Kenya's president set fire to thousands of elephant tusks and rhino horns on Saturday, destroying a stockpile that would have been worth a fortune to smugglers and sending a message that trade in the animal parts must be stopped.

Plumes of smoke rose as the flames took hold of tusks piled up in a game reserve on the edge of the capital Nairobi, destroying 105 tonnes of ivory from about 8,000 animals, the biggest ever incineration of its kind.

President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed those who argued Kenya, which staged its first such burning in 1989, should instead have sold the ivory and the tonne of rhino horn, which by some estimates would have an illegal market value of $150 million.

"Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants," he told dignitaries before setting light to the first of almost a dozen pyres.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-wildlife-idUSKCN0XR0D5?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[houston16revival]

1. I understand what they're trying to accomplish

but reducing the supply is supposed to dis-incentivize harvesting?

What a waste of ivory. Museums, restorers might have liked some of it.

Now the remaining live elephants are worth more dead.

[Flaxbee]

4. Selling it means there's a market (even if a regulated one); giving it away to museums

might have been OK but it should not allowed to be sold, period. Environmentalist Leakey said that the last time they did this, the price went from $300 to $5 for the same amount - apparently it did reduce the price. But it would seem less ivory on the market would increase the price.

The problem is the demand - China, Vietnam and Laos apparently are insatiable and want dead animal trinkets. And the US is a big ivory market too. It is utterly sickening.

[jmowreader]

6. The first time they did an ivory burn, demand dropped like a rock

The Kenyan people earn a LOT of money from tourism. The big draw in Kenya is the opportunity to see wildlife; no one's going to fly to Nairobi to see dead animals.

[Odin2005]

2. Bad idea, this just drives up the price.

Given that the Chinese are unwilling to stop buying ivory the only solution is to find a way so that the animals are worth more alive than dead to the locals in Africa.

[Helen Borg]

3. I'm ambivalent about this...

I mean, doing something useful with them would seem to make more sense in a way. I mean, something that could not be resold. Feel bad about all that waste of ivory.

[LeftyMom]

5. They did the right thing. Legal sales just camouflage the black market.

Think of it this way: if the US government decided to sell confiscated drugs along with paperwork saying that this is a legal kilo of coke, how many kilos of coke would travel with that piece of paper? How many counterfeit coke certificates would be printed up? Would that weaken or strengthen the black market?

That's exactly what legal confiscated ivory sales do.