Dilute the ivory market, or stand strong and keep the ban?

This was the question being asked at the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora over the last two weeks.

If you're like me, you may be asking, "Why would we ever lift the ban on ivory?" Well, the argument for the dilution of the market, is that by flooding trade passages with the contraband by making the sale of ivory legal, it would decrease demand for it, protecting elephants from an increase in poaching. The Cuban cigar effect, if you will. By making ivory so readily available, it would decrease it's value by rendering less exclusive and rare.

However, for this to work, elephants would need to be farmed for their tusks in order to keep the market diluted and demand down. The plan proposed at the convention, though, was to release the ivory already seized by governments and conservation groups to the public. While there is some merit to this plan in the short term, I would argue that it would only increase demand for ivory in the long run.

Imagine giving candy to a small child to keep it from crying. Sure, it will shut them up for a little while, but when the candy runs out, they'll just want more. Then the crying will be back. But this time it won't be like sniffling whine from before. Oh no. This time it will be the tortured screams of the damned using the child's mouth as a megaphone, projecting its manipulative agony across the entire cabin of the plane. You'll want to stand strong, but you've opened the box, and the kid just won't shut up. The disapproving glances from the rest of the passengers will become too much for you to bear, and you'll be back to shoveling candy down your child's throat. But it's only a temporary solution. What happens when you run out of candy? Will your sweet, blessing of a child understand? The answer is no. They've got the power now. They know that you'll do anything to make them be quiet again, so why concede to the small problem of a limited supply? They won't care. And you'll be stuck trying to figure out if this trip to the Keys was really worth it.

This is exactly what releasing the current supply of ivory and lifting the ban would do to the market. They'll be happy for a while, but eventually they'll want more, and no one will be able to provide. An estimated 30,000 elephants are killed every year to support the ivory trade. Elephants are a protected species on the endangered animals list due to the fact that there are only about 450,000- 700,000 African elephants and 35,000-40,000 wild Asian elephants remaining. Elephants are not a sustainable resource. This is a fact that was discovered thousands of years ago, when humans were taming and domesticating animals. They found that elephants were only useful as labor animals, rather than sources of food or other materials, because it takes about 15 years for an elephant to fully mature. This means they are incapable of reproducing as quickly as they were being farmed, and would have to be farmed to support the ivory trade.

The solution to the preservation of elephants shouldn't be a temporary fix. You can't slap a bandage on an open wound, shout "fixed!", and move on. You're going to bleed out. We need to staunch the flow of ivory before we bleed these noble animals dry, and do irreperable damage to our environment.