Thread: Is it wrong to try to get my hands on some of this?

Is he ever cute!
Wasn't there a relocation program anyhow?

Originally Posted by mosley59

As I understand, old pianos used ivory for their keys. If you find a crappy old grand, you could always recycle the keys for scale.

Does the ivory cover only the visible part or the entire length of the key?
If the former, then it will be too short for scales. You coulduse it for inlays though.

Originally Posted by gentlemanly

On a side note, I don't understand the concept that the animals are dangerous and that there are too many of them, could someone please elaborate?

What's your question here?

Basically, you can over protect a species, if none of them die, or they are introduced in areas they would not be otherwise and flourish, then eventually you have too many. It's quite a big problem, not just with elephants - but the same principles can apply to any species.

Are Elephants still considered endangered?

It would still be out and out wrong to harvest them for ivory.

Ive seen pictures in documentaries of elephants slaughtered solely for their ivory, the animal is left to rot in the sun while the poachers use a chainsaw to cut the face from the animal in order to procure the ivory. This is the worst kind of waste, if they had eaten the animal as well as taken the ivory, I could understand the want and need of hungry people. These are not hungry people, these are criminals. There is plenty of mammoth ivory floating around these days as well as recycled ivory from other uses, If I wanted ivory I would use these two kinds. I am not an environmentalist, I am a conservationist, I believe in good management of resources so that they can be used/enjoyed by all future generations.

Originally Posted by gregs656

Ivory is a funny one. There are too many elephants at the moment, and they're doing a lot of damage. I know that some countries in Africa are permitting hunting again.

I think I'm with Leighton on this one, completely.

I would probably keep a razor if it came with Ivory scales.

It's not the elephants that are the problem. It's the humans taking up the space that the elephants used to occupy. No, the humans don't have the right to do that.
If you keep the elephant population in check because 'they cause a lot of damage', why don't you keep the human population in check as well? They do a lot more damage, on a seriously larger scale. We even manage to litter space with waste...

Well if you really want ivory, (legal, as far as I know) or something like it, I stumbled on this website looking for water buffalo horn.

Boone Trading Company - Ivory and Scrimshaw

They have various horn, fossil ivory, boar tusk, which, I'm told is similar in its properties, as well as pre-ban ivory from piano keys, etc.

Mammoth ivory has no such moral issues.

Originally Posted by Zwaplat

It's not the elephants that are the problem. It's the humans taking up the space that the elephants used to occupy. No, the humans don't have the right to do that.
If you keep the elephant population in check because 'they cause a lot of damage', why don't you keep the human population in check as well? They do a lot more damage, on a seriously larger scale. We even manage to litter space with waste...

Is it? I believe there are more elephants in parts of Africa than have ever been seen before, and Elephants in areas they did not normally reside in.

The Human population is kept in check, to a degree, by war and famine and natural disasters and etc etc etc Although we (the west) kinda messed up the natural balance in Africa when we vaccinated every one against everything.

My point is, that currently there are few things that have any impact on the elephant population because they are so heavily protected. This is not natural.

Originally Posted by gregs656

Is it? I believe there are more elephants in parts of Africa than have ever been seen before, and Elephants in areas they did not normally reside in.

The Human population is kept in check, to a degree, by war and famine and natural disasters and etc etc etc Although we (the west) kinda messed up the natural balance in Africa when we vaccinated every one against everything.

My point is, that currently there are few things that have any impact on the elephant population because they are so heavily protected. This is not natural.

Wow Greg565,

Do you really believe what you are writing or is this something you'd like to believe? Here is something that I believe:
"African elephants once lived throughout Africa; they now inhabit no more than one-third of the continent and are gone from the Sahara. Over the past 150 years, ivory hunters have ruthlessly hunted them for their tusks. Between 1979 and 1989, Africa's elephant population plummeted from 1,300,000 animals to 750,000, due mostly to ivory hunting. Since the 1980s, an international ban on trade in ivory has helped many populations hold steady or rebound. However, African elephants have lost much of their habitat to ranches, farms, and desertification. The forest elephant, always far less common than the savanna subspecies, is under threat from logging and market hunting for its meat. African elephants are now found mostly in reserves. In some parks, confined elephant populations have major impacts on habitat, changing open forests into grasslands."

That was taken from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AfricanSavanna/fact-afelephant.cfm

I would tend to chose them over you as the expert. But hey, I could be wrong.

Brad

I studied it. This is what I was told, if I'm wrong then so be it.

But, the last sentance of that blub would allow me to be correct to some degree. I appreciate that there has been a huge fall in the over all population, but I didn't actually disagree with that in the first place.

And elephants in the areas where they are deemed to be 'allowed' IE the parks, are 'safe' so they breed and breed and breed.