Ivory—How Much Is It Worth?

At an international conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, during June 1997, delegates from 138 countries voted to ease a seven-year-old global ban on the trade in ivory. The decision, which followed bitter debate, allows three nations in southern Africa—Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe—conditionally to sell ivory to one country, Japan. Representatives from southern Africa rejoiced at the decision, breaking forth in song. Other delegates brooded with apprehension at what this might mean for the African elephant.

WHEN Hannibal challenged the army of Rome in the third century B.C.E., he had with him a train of domesticated African elephants. In those days African elephants probably numbered in the tens of millions and thrived from the Cape to Cairo.

Things changed. One observer noted: “Human islands in a sea of elephants changed to increasingly small islands of elephants in a sea of people.” As people increased in numbers, competition for land left elephants the losers. Another factor in the decline of elephants was the expansion southward of the Sahara Desert.

Overshadowing these reasons, however, was the demand for ivory. Unlike tiger bone and rhino horn, ivory is not bound to any myth of pharmaceutical value. Nevertheless, it is luxurious, beautiful, durable, and easy to carve. From ancient times, ivory from elephant tusks has been classed among things precious and desirable.Four hundred years after Hannibal, the Roman Empire decimated elephant populations in northern Africa to satisfy a craving for ivory.
According to the book Battle for the Elephants, in the year 1910 alone, about 700 tons of ivory (representing 13,000 slaughtered elephants) was used to make 350,000 keyboards in the United states.

This time, two factors portended disaster for elephants in Africa. First was the increased availability of lightweight, sophisticated weapons. Suddenly it was easy to gun down not only individual elephants but also entire herds. Second, electric carving tools meant that raw ivory could be swiftly transformed into items ready for market. In the past, a Japanese carver might have spent a year carving a single tusk. With electric tools, however, in just one week, a factory of eight people making jewelry and hanko (name seals popular in Japan) could consume the tusks of 300 elephants. Rising demands for ivory caused prices to soar. Of course, the big money did not go to the poachers but to middlemen and dealers, many of whom became fabulously wealthy.

The cost in elephants was horrendous. Within roughly two decades, Tanzania lost 80 percent of its elephants, mostly to poachers. Kenya lost 85 percent of its elephants. Uganda lost 95 percent. At first, poachers shot mainly bull elephants, because they had the largest tusks. But as the older elephants became fewer, poachers began shooting even calves for their puny tusks. During that period, more than a million elephants may have been slaughtered for their ivory, cutting Africa’s elephant population to 625,000.
Efforts to control trade in ivory and to halt the carnage failed miserably. Finally, in October 1989, at a conference in Switzerland, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) banned all trade in ivory among its member nations. The ban was bolstered by massive funding to protect elephants in the field.
In countries where elephants roam, ivory accumulates. It comes from elephants that have been culled, from elephants that die of natural causes, and from illegal hoards that have been confiscated. What is done with this ivory?

Kenya burns her ivory. Since July 1989, Kenya has publicly torched raw ivory worth millions of dollars, with no direct compensation from outside sources. In 1992, Zambia also burned its ivory stockpile. The message was clear: Kenya and Zambia wanted no part in the ivory trade.

Other countries have kept their stockpiles as a future investment.. The consequences of the decision to relax the ban on the trade in ivory remain to be seen. Yet, even if things work out well, the threat to the elephant will not vanish. The elephant is also threatened by growing numbers of people who need land for farming and for other reasons. In southern Africa alone, people deforest, mostly for agriculture, more than 3,000 square miles [some 850,000 ha] of land each year—an area half the size of Israel. As the sea of people grows larger, the islands of elephants are certain to become ever smaller.
sources ; https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101998206#h=1
image credit ; https://www.pexels.com/search/ivory/

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