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

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.

Out of curiosity, is it legal to take the tusks off an elephant that has died of natural causes? Or do the tusks have to be left to rot with the rest of the carcass? Edit: after asking this stupid question I realize all ivory must be illegal because it would be impossible to determine which tusk came from where.

Originally Posted by Johnny J

Out of curiosity, is it legal to take the tusks off an elephant that has died of natural causes? Or do the tusks have to be left to rot with the rest of the carcass? Edit: after asking this stupid question I realize all ivory must be illegal because it would be impossible to determine which tusk came from where.

It completely depends upon the country. Under the common law, whoever finds the dead elephant owns the tusks if no person owns the land. If someone owned the land, then the elephant belongs to that person. Its weird, and its British so....

Either case, its still illegal to import the tusks to America. I don't know about other countries.

A better question would be: how soon do the tusks need to be harvested after death to be valuable? Do they rot? Can someone pick them up off the ground 6 months later and make some nice stuff out of it?

I would have no problem with people scouring the plains for already dead elephants. However, I doubt they die in that great of a number so as to make it worth someone's time to go out and look for dead elephants.

Ivory can get very old without rotting.
Elephant's graveyard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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...

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.

Originally Posted by gregs656

But, the last sentance of that blub would allow me to be correct to some degree. We all have our priorities. 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...Oh, I'm sorry I was confused by this statement you made earlier: "I believe there are more elephants in parts of Africa than have ever been seen before..."

My comments in blue