4 ms·

What will happen to the people who hunt/trade ivory. Specifically, those who live in villages and depend on it as a source of income. Will there be assistance t

by fma 10y ago

What will happen to the people who hunt/trade ivory. Specifically, those who live in villages and depend on it as a source of income. Will there be assistance to wean them off elephant hunting. I hope they get new skills and do not poach other animals.

mullingitover 10y ago
This is like saying, in response to a crackdown on mugging, "I hope the muggers get the assistance they need to get new skills and not move on to other crimes." I'd prefer if the poachers actually all got arrested, and got new skills breaking big rocks into smaller rocks.
- fma 10y ago
  Your line of thinking is why the "War on Drugs" is a failure. If you think people want to hunt elephants, deal drugs, or mug for a living, you haven't thought hard enough on the socioeconomic problem that plagues the poor.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    The war on drugs comparison is really commonly compared with war on illegal wildlife, however the two differ pretty drastically once you stop thinking of them as just "bans on things". For example, the prevention strategies for these two are vastly different. Furthermore, a.) There are legal drugs and substances that can be used to manufacture illegal drugs. You cannot fully outlaw these, unlike wildlife animal products. b.) IIRC the vast majority of illegal wildlife products come to the US (and US is large consumer of illegal wildlife products) via ships (as opposed to by plane or truck) and is only a handful of ports that need to be secured. There is like an infinite number of potential access points for drugs. And even if you succeed 100% in preventing smuggling attempts, you will still have domestic manufacturers. c.) The reason why the two are banned are really different to. With wildlife poaching, the damage is done during the "manufacturing" of the products, whereas with drugs it's mostly the consumption and trade that cause the damage.
- fma 10y ago
  Reading material for you from the president of Columbia, citing the failures of the War on Drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/colombia-united-nations-assembly-war-on-drugs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/colombia-unite... "“We need to provide social and economic alternatives to small growers of illegal crops and other vulnerable communities in order to create the necessary conditions to bring them back to legality,” wrote Santos in an opinion piece in the Observer." And your analogy of the mugging is invalid. In mugging there's two parties, the mugger and the victim. The war on drugs is the closest analogy. It is an illegal trade, just like ivory. There's three parties. The grower, seller, and buyer. If you do not get the grower, in this case, the ivory hunter, a legal path to providing food for their family, it will be a failure, just like the crackdown on cocaine for the last 30 years.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    > We need to provide social and economic alternatives to small growers of illegal crops and other vulnerable communities in order to create the necessary conditions to bring them back to legality, We don't want legality. The reason why the situation is really bad currently is because back in 2008, CITES lifted restrictions on ivory sales which allowed several African nations to sell their ivory stockpiles to China and Japan. The current situation is believed to be a direct result of this and the demand has skyrocket since then. In 80's, there was a similar poaching crisis, what eventually put an end to it was making as much of the trade as possible illegal. War on drugs and poaching are similar only on the superficial level. Read my comment below where I talk about it.
    - zimzam 10y ago
      The "them" in this sentence is the farmers not the drugs: the quote is arguing for giving the farmers a path to a legal livelihood. Similarly the parent is arguing for legal alternatives to poaching as desperate, starving people will always care about feeding their families more than an arbitrary law.
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
- rwallace 10y ago
  If a mugger is caught, I'm very much in favor of giving him a hefty prison sentence. However, if you want a sustained decline in the violent crime rate in a whole society, law enforcement is only part of the picture. You absolutely do have to do something about the root causes, the socio-economic factors that were giving a generation of young men the feeling that they had nothing better to do than mug people. It's not about sympathy for criminals. It's about doing things that actually work, not just things that feel righteous.
tn13 10y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I think people on HN perceive hunting or ivory trading as something bad such as human trafficking. It isn't. My great-grandfather was an Ivory trader and traded ivory and employed artists who would make amazing carvings out of Ivory he purchased from Kerala and Africa. With increasing government regulation and heavy handed attitude of regulators the entire industry got pushed underground. My grandfather shut the business and the artists went into underground economy being exploited and working in more horrible conditions. As far as Ivory trade in Kenya is considered the people who take money from the western world to conserve are often the leaders of the cartels who smuggle ivory. The result of the ban would be further exploitation of the poachers and hunters and yes they are going to poach elephants at faster rate.
- neximo64 10y ago
  Well sorry to say this but even under your grandfathers time ivory trading was awful. I say this as a Kenyan. The leadership of the Government of Kenya at the time were involved in this and it led to not only to a culture of large scale corruption but also to uncontrolled killing of elephants. The good side that was looked at at the time: Elephants no longer invade human settlement and profit can be made from it. The downside no one cared about was the long term survival of elephants. Unfortunately the corruption element is where everything broke down, it wasn't that the industry was pushed underground - it was that the elephant is not an animal that can be farmed or domesticated & further - the demand outweighing supply only meant that regulation couldn't be enforced anyway. Your grandfather played a role in this which is nothing to be proud of. Today it is the same thing you cannot regulate elephants and farm them because they cannot be domesticated and have lifespans as long as us. I can say this having elephant ivory in my house from my elderly family members too - also not a good thing. They did not trade it but they bought it being unaware of the consequences where unrestrained human and economic growth eats into the limited factet of nature's abundance. Good thing though: Elephants now adapt evolutionarily and grow old without tusks.

by fma 10y ago

mullingitover 10y ago

This is like saying, in response to a crackdown on mugging, "I hope the muggers get the assistance they need to get new skills and not move on to other crimes." I'd prefer if the poachers actually all got arrested, and got new skills breaking big rocks into smaller rocks.

fma 10y ago
Your line of thinking is why the "War on Drugs" is a failure. If you think people want to hunt elephants, deal drugs, or mug for a living, you haven't thought hard enough on the socioeconomic problem that plagues the poor.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  The war on drugs comparison is really commonly compared with war on illegal wildlife, however the two differ pretty drastically once you stop thinking of them as just "bans on things". For example, the prevention strategies for these two are vastly different. Furthermore, a.) There are legal drugs and substances that can be used to manufacture illegal drugs. You cannot fully outlaw these, unlike wildlife animal products. b.) IIRC the vast majority of illegal wildlife products come to the US (and US is large consumer of illegal wildlife products) via ships (as opposed to by plane or truck) and is only a handful of ports that need to be secured. There is like an infinite number of potential access points for drugs. And even if you succeed 100% in preventing smuggling attempts, you will still have domestic manufacturers. c.) The reason why the two are banned are really different to. With wildlife poaching, the damage is done during the "manufacturing" of the products, whereas with drugs it's mostly the consumption and trade that cause the damage.
fma 10y ago
Reading material for you from the president of Columbia, citing the failures of the War on Drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/colombia-united-nations-assembly-war-on-drugs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/18/colombia-unite... "“We need to provide social and economic alternatives to small growers of illegal crops and other vulnerable communities in order to create the necessary conditions to bring them back to legality,” wrote Santos in an opinion piece in the Observer." And your analogy of the mugging is invalid. In mugging there's two parties, the mugger and the victim. The war on drugs is the closest analogy. It is an illegal trade, just like ivory. There's three parties. The grower, seller, and buyer. If you do not get the grower, in this case, the ivory hunter, a legal path to providing food for their family, it will be a failure, just like the crackdown on cocaine for the last 30 years.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  > We need to provide social and economic alternatives to small growers of illegal crops and other vulnerable communities in order to create the necessary conditions to bring them back to legality, We don't want legality. The reason why the situation is really bad currently is because back in 2008, CITES lifted restrictions on ivory sales which allowed several African nations to sell their ivory stockpiles to China and Japan. The current situation is believed to be a direct result of this and the demand has skyrocket since then. In 80's, there was a similar poaching crisis, what eventually put an end to it was making as much of the trade as possible illegal. War on drugs and poaching are similar only on the superficial level. Read my comment below where I talk about it.
  - zimzam 10y ago
    The "them" in this sentence is the farmers not the drugs: the quote is arguing for giving the farmers a path to a legal livelihood. Similarly the parent is arguing for legal alternatives to poaching as desperate, starving people will always care about feeding their families more than an arbitrary law.
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
rwallace 10y ago
If a mugger is caught, I'm very much in favor of giving him a hefty prison sentence. However, if you want a sustained decline in the violent crime rate in a whole society, law enforcement is only part of the picture. You absolutely do have to do something about the root causes, the socio-economic factors that were giving a generation of young men the feeling that they had nothing better to do than mug people. It's not about sympathy for criminals. It's about doing things that actually work, not just things that feel righteous.

tn13 10y ago

Not sure why you are being downvoted. I think people on HN perceive hunting or ivory trading as something bad such as human trafficking. It isn't. My great-grandfather was an Ivory trader and traded ivory and employed artists who would make amazing carvings out of Ivory he purchased from Kerala and Africa. With increasing government regulation and heavy handed attitude of regulators the entire industry got pushed underground. My grandfather shut the business and the artists went into underground economy being exploited and working in more horrible conditions. As far as Ivory trade in Kenya is considered the people who take money from the western world to conserve are often the leaders of the cartels who smuggle ivory. The result of the ban would be further exploitation of the poachers and hunters and yes they are going to poach elephants at faster rate.

neximo64 10y ago
Well sorry to say this but even under your grandfathers time ivory trading was awful. I say this as a Kenyan. The leadership of the Government of Kenya at the time were involved in this and it led to not only to a culture of large scale corruption but also to uncontrolled killing of elephants. The good side that was looked at at the time: Elephants no longer invade human settlement and profit can be made from it. The downside no one cared about was the long term survival of elephants. Unfortunately the corruption element is where everything broke down, it wasn't that the industry was pushed underground - it was that the elephant is not an animal that can be farmed or domesticated & further - the demand outweighing supply only meant that regulation couldn't be enforced anyway. Your grandfather played a role in this which is nothing to be proud of. Today it is the same thing you cannot regulate elephants and farm them because they cannot be domesticated and have lifespans as long as us. I can say this having elephant ivory in my house from my elderly family members too - also not a good thing. They did not trade it but they bought it being unaware of the consequences where unrestrained human and economic growth eats into the limited factet of nature's abundance. Good thing though: Elephants now adapt evolutionarily and grow old without tusks.