I agree, this is an interesting thread, and speaks to many moral and ethical questions.

There are those who say that it is never OK to use ivory, those who say that it is OK if the animal was harvested in the correct manner, those who say that it is OK if a village harvested the animal to feed starving people, and those who say that it is OK as long as it was procured before the ban.

I am a hunter myself, one who uses animals for food, I won't call hunting a sport because I don't see it as such, and I despise poachers, and all related items. Even pre-ban ivory was probably procured by poaching, it just wasn't illegal back then. If there were farms set up to raise and harvest non-endangered elephants and used all of the animal (flesh for meat, hide for leather, bones for gelatin, etc...) would that be OK? I don't think I would have a problem with that.

That being said...I don't think that the person who started this thread should have been chastised by some as an evil elephant slaughterer for asking the question or thinking about it, if we all were judged on our thoughts alone, I don't think anyone would get along. We can state our points of view rationally and attempt to get others to see from a different perspective, without being too judgmental or cynical about it (which many have done beautifully and articulately). After all IMO he only asked a moral/ethical thought provoking question that many of us feel strongly about...now if he had said "Hey guys, I just got some illegal ivory for scales, and I don't care at all where it came from or how it was harvested, what do you think?" I could understand some of the harsher comments.

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?