A Practical Solution to the Issue

As Published in Perspective

LOS ANGELES — The Federal government’s recent effort to ban the sale and movement of objects made from or with ivory has gone quiet for the moment, perhaps in the face of the 2014 political changes in Congress. But the election results certainly haven’t slowed any of the animal rights groups from their concerted effort to demonize ivory.

These groups have simply shifted their disdain for this historic material to state capitals and major cities claiming that the country is swimming in illegal ivory. For proof, one group asked investigators to identify ivory for retail sale that “might possibly” have been worked after 1977. That could literally mean everything they saw since “might possibly” is a lot different than “was probably.” While Virginia has just refused to become involved, California, Washington, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, and Kansas as well as San Francisco and now Los Angeles are being asked to pass anti-ivory legislation contrary to the interests of millions of Americans and thousands of institutions that own ivory objects.

The 2014 Federal effort to convince the world that possessing one of its most precious materials is evil was met with strong opposition from museums, musicians, artisans, antique dealers, appraisers, auctioneers, collectors, hunters, academics, and many ordinary citizens who treasure or use objects containing ivory.

The Federal government’s approach to stopping elephant poaching seemed flawed from the outset:

• Since the market for illegal ivory products is overwhelmingly in East Asia — certifiably not the U.S. — why punish Americans for owning something that had been legally obtained; is of immense artistic, practical, historic, and scientific importance; and has been widely admired since time immemorial?
• How can banning trade in important cultural artifacts carved from fossilized walrus or from mammoth and mastodon tusks — animals that have been extinct for tens of thousands of years — have anything realistically to do with saving African elephants today?
• Why is it that expert opinion is good enough to determine the authenticity of paintings worth millions of dollars, but the Feds insists on seeing written documentation that never existed to determine whether an ivory object is legal or fake? Who has ever acquired a craftsman’s original invoice for an ivory object he made?
• Why is it that public officials assume that the millions of ordinary citizens who have inherited or preserved countless memorable and culturally important ivory pieces can be thrown under the bus in favor of a handful of vocal animal rights extremists who claim that banning ivory in America is the most important way to save African elephants that they repeatedly claim are about to become extinct?

Only someone who hasn’t been paying attention would miss the answer to these questions. It is MONEY! Insisting on ending the trade and movement of ivory objects to save elephants and stop terrorism raises large amounts from sympathetic donors. It doesn’t much matter whether the picture is of a bull elephant taken down for its tusks or a film of two young calves playing in the mud, elephants generate enormous interest, sympathy and smiles that translate into large contributions.

The more money that elephants can raise for animal rights groups, of course, the more powerful their leaders become in the scheme of governance. They are able to entertain lavishly, travel extensively and underwrite research generously and they can conduct surveys, buy ads and produce documentaries to raise even more money. But most of all they can pay themselves impressive salaries and make eye-opening contributions to support the reelection of like-minded politicians under the protection of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

What a combination: Admired wild animals threatened by greedy, uncaring humans are saved by the concern of government leaders across the country. Impressive, but basically a fraud. Elephant numbers have been diminishing in certain parts of Africa, but not in others — and where the numbers are going down, the causes are not solely East Asian demand for ivory. While elephant herds have clearly suffered from the activities of poachers serving criminal gangs in the northern areas of central Africa, that isn’t the full story of the cause of the reduction in some herds.

• An estimated 15% of the elephants that the extremists say are “killed” by poachers each year are actually dying from natural causes. Old age, disease, and accidents catch up with elephants just as they do with humans. Moreover, elephants everywhere in Africa and Asia are in competition with humans for land. Elephants need enormous quantities of space to forage for food and water. Some have been eliminated by locals intent on saving their crops and villages from destruction and some have been hunted as a source of food.
• In southern parts of Africa, the same competition arises but the size of the elephant herds are growing in part because managed conservation techniques, where practiced, can balance the needs and interests of local communities with those of the elephants. Once locals begin appreciating the benefits of wildlife tourism, they gain a major economic stake in protecting their animals. Soon, corruption decreases, herds grow and a reasonable balance between man and animal is achieved. Ancillary benefits can come from selling the tusks of deceased and culled elephants with the money used to improve living conditions.
• Researchers for the UN Environment Programme, Interpol, and the Ivory Education Institute all conclude that terrorism is not an integral aspect of wildlife trafficking in Africa. There just aren’t enough elephants in the areas where al Shabab, Boko Haram, or the Lord’s Resistance Army are operating to support their financial needs, especially while other much more lucrative illegal funding sources are available to them.

But animal rights advocates, who live in big Western cities and often are unaware of human factors on the ground in Africa, have been convinced to view any ivory market as an incentive for poachers. They point to how a 2008 one-time sale of tusks only whetted appetites for more ivory in an insatiable wave of demand. Not true. The evidence from reputable researchers indicates that the one time sale was absorbed by speculators betting on a lack of a consistent future supply and that fear pushed the price of the remaining available ivory up, in turn increasing the incentive for poachers to do their evil. It is still going on. As long as people believe that they can repeal the laws of supply and demand, illegal activities and a black market will flourish.

Most of us don’t have to go too deeply into history to see other examples of the wishful thinking of naive do-gooders turned into expensive, failed government policy.

• Prohibition didn’t stem the supply of alcohol or stop drinking; on the contrary, both increased dramatically.
• The War on Drugs hasn’t ended marijuana and cocaine on American streets; they are still doing damage.
• Illegal immigration hasn’t stopped with a fence or increased surveillance technology; it is still going on.

The solution to the ivory question is rooted in managing demand rather than in trying to end supply. Specialists in ivory believe that if a consistent, controlled ivory marketplace were established and properly managed— using tusks in storage, tusks from animals that die of natural causes as well as culling practices, and ivory that has been recycled — it would allow for managed conservation techniques, establish a stable pricing mechanism to satisfy demand, and allow for ivory to be used for many of its historic purposes.

The notion that American consumption of ivory products stimulates Asian demand is a myth perpetrated by animal extremists abetted by zealous public relations firms. Where is their evidence? There is, in fact, no measurable U.S. demand for ivory objects from newly harvested tusks. State and city legislators should not buy into the kind of wooly thinking or wobbly reasoning being advanced by animal rights advocates.

They are in the game of manipulating elected officials to raise MONEY for their
organizations, not to save elephants in Africa. If they were serious about the latter effort, they
would stop using scare tactics, spreading false statistics, and offering half-truths, and start
spending more of their huge resources on Africa’s real conservation needs.

About Perspective:
Perspective — Understanding the News in Context,  is a periodical publication of Ivory Education Institute. The above article was published in the Vol. 2, No.1 issue on February 10, 2015.

This post is a comment by Andre DeGeorges to an article by Daniel Stiles in the National Geographic’s website  that was published on September 15, 2014. You can read the article here:   Can Elephants Survive a Continued Ivory Trade Ban?

By: Andre DeGeorges

I still feel a few important issues are ignored in general, even by the sustainable use crowd. The key word is POVERTY and Ron Thomson seems to be the shepherd boy crying wolf and no one is listening. Unless people are lifted out of poverty in Africa, the habitat for elephant and other species will go and more and more elephant will be exterminated either as pests, as revenge killings – like rhino and lion have been in East Africa, and even poached.

Africa’s human majority subsistence population will more than double in the 21st century and along with that will be attempts at increasing their livestock as a source of wealth and food – unless pressure can be taken off these rural areas. As already discussed, Zimbabwean PH Andy Wilkinson coined the phrase “Politics of Despair” with people in a survival mode rotating between the rural areas and urban slums – mining Sub-Saharan Africa’s natural resources

What does this mean:

1. An equitable portion of wealth from elephant and other natural resources must accrue to the people living with the wildlife/timber/strategic minerals, etc. – as opposed to today where the majority goes to governments and the private sector – but to be negotiated with the private sector since at this point in Africa’s development rural people do not have the marketing contacts to make this happen.
2. Foreign aid must change from 70-90% going back to the donor countries via NGOs, consulting firms, so-called “experts”, conditions precedents (e.g., buy America or Europe) and be channelled to remain in Africa for health and education.
3. Like China, a large portion of what is today Foreign Aid must go to subsidizing the West’s private sector in the form of low interest loans, in high risks areas – grants, and even infrastructure – to invest in Africa and help Africa get added value from transformation of a higher percentage of its natural resources in Africa. The existing taxidermy industry in Southern Africa is a good example, as is trophy & biltong hunting. South Africa probably has the largest formal bush meat trade in the world readily available in butcheries throughout the country. Additional added value is obtained from souvenirs and household items made from game skins and horn – from rugs & wall hangings to knife handles, cork screw handles and bottle openers. Zimbabwe’s game skin Courteney boots http://www.courteneyboot.com/shoes.php are world famous among hunters! South Africa has an excellent diamond cutting/jewelry industry and to a lesser degree Tanzania (e.g., tanzanite) and Kenya produce gemstone jewelry. South Africa then has various outlets such as Mervis Diamonds in the U.S. (http://www.mervisdiamond.com/about-mervis ). Added value can happen with many other natural resources such as COLTAN to make microchips and tropical hardwoods to make furniture for export, etc.
4. Salaries must be based upon Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) – not slave wages – that is local cost of living as a means of creating a middle class and taking pressure off the rural areas and adequate pollution controls – unlike the Athi River Industrial area on the edge of Nairobi!!

What this means is that Africa must experience Economic Development, and not just Economic Growth (increasing GDP) as is the case today, if the World wishes to see Africa’s people and wildlife have a future. And yes – if this poverty is not overcome expect to also see an increase in Radical Islam & the political Instability that follows it. As I see it the rise in Radical Islam, Increased Poaching, habitat loss and even the projected increase in population (when you are poor with no retirement & a high infant mortality you have plenty of kids to assure security in old age & besides as in my Mom’s generations – her 11 brothers and sisters were cheap farm labor), & mass migrations out of Africa into Europe and South Africa are indices of Poverty that if not overcome will lead to increased poverty, political chaos and the demise of Africa’s unique biodiversity and charismatic mega-fauna .

The above may not be what the West wishes for Africa – I mean what are a few elephant compared to control over access to Africa’s oil and strategic metals; as cheaply as possible. Chaos often facilitates the extraction and under-priced sale of natural resources as we see in the Eastern DRC and even with the black marketing of ivory and rhino horn – where the middlemen & end users, not the people living among the resources, make the majority of the profits. When you are in a survival mode – most people will take any risk necessary to meet their daily needs. That’s why a large middle class tends to increase the likelihood of both political stability and a population willing to buy into modern concepts of biodiversity and conservation.

In simple terms, suppose tomorrow the average American/European found the supermarkets closed and/or we went back into another Great Depression that put people in a survival mode. Within a short time – I’d say a week or maybe two – why poaching, stealing, robberies, etc. would spike as people would do whatever it takes to survive! The majority of Africans are in a Survival Mode! I know I am repeating to some degree what I have said before, but while Daniel’s analysis is critical, it is but one small piece to a larger puzzle that must be constructed if Africa and its people are to have a future.

Conservation, marketing of elephant and rhino products, etc. will fail unless part of a bigger picture.
Say – why can’t Africa develop a major ivory carving business as a means of obtaining added value? Senegal had some good ivory carvers and if the African art I collected over the years is any indication of Africa’s potential – this should be looked at very closely!

Anyway, there will be no Free Lunches. Unless Africa/Africans takes/take control of its/their own destiny – don’t expect the West or China to see you through your current crisis.

About Andre DeGeorges:
Dr. Andre DeGeorges has over 30 years of experience in natural resource management, planning and policy reform in Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and the United States. Dr. DeGeorges retired from the Department of Nature Conservation, Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, South Africa, in 2008, where from 2002 onward he was manager of Project Noah, a program to train youth from regions of Africa rich in wildlife in natural resource management while exposing them to the economic value of wildlife. He is currently an active commentator on conservation.

By: Godfrey Harris

Because of British currency restrictions enacted just before World War II, my father had to come up with an innovative way of getting his cash out of England when, fearing a German invasion, we immigrated to the United States. He settled on silver. Before leaving, he purchased all the Georgian silver objects he could find, with the idea of selling them once the family reached America.

A few months after we arrived, he opened the Harris English Silver Co. in Manhattan. While wartime rationing made many everyday items difficult to obtain, the demands of holidays, birthdays and anniversaries still required special gifts. Antique silver answered that need for many New Yorkers.
By 1944 my father had made more than enough to move the family to California, where he sold most of the remainder of his original inventory. Things were going so well that he decided to take a buying trip to England in 1948, and he took me along as his 11-year-old assistant. At each antique shop we visited, he would slowly survey the goods on display, identify the pieces of particular interest, and then have all the items brought together in one spot where he could inspect them. I was told to pick out anything that caught my eye and bring those pieces, too, to the central collection point.

I soon found that the pieces I gravitated to — boxes, doll house furnishings, knife rests, small carvings, writing implements, hand tools and the like — tended to have one thing in common: They were nearly all made of ivory.

When the shipment from that buying trip reached Los Angeles, my father gave me most of the items I had selected, and that was the start of my ivory collection. After becoming a U.S. diplomat, I added to these original items during trips abroad. And I soon became fascinated by the different uses to which ivory has been put — some practical, because of the material’s special properties, and some decorative, because of its unusual beauty.

Ivory pieces, like other artistic expressions, reflect the time and cultures that produced them. That’s one of the main reasons people collect artifacts of any sort: to preserve the best examples of cultural expression.
Today, however, ivory collections like mine — and ivory collectors themselves — are being vilified. The current debate in Washington over ivory policy has far less to do with protecting elephants than it does with satisfying the assumptions of animal rights groups, making things simple for government officials and accommodating the special wants of hunters and the special needs of musicians and museum curators. Collectors have little voice in the debate, and their collections have been likened to blood diamonds or denigrated as vanity indulgences. Any harm that American collectors suffer from the new regulations has been dismissed by Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as collateral damage for the greater good of saving elephants.

Ashe has issued an order that virtually eliminates all trade and movement in the United States of objects made from or with ivory — no matter their origin, age or provenance — by requiring unimpeachable, detailed documentation on the ivory contained in a piece. To buy, trade or sell such pieces, collectors must have original bills of sale or repair invoices or proof of the year of importation into the United States. No collector and very few antique dealers can produce that kind of documentation, especially since none of it was required at the time most of the pieces were imported or purchased. How many treasures inherited from a relative or given as gifts come with written proof of where they came from or how they got here?

These draconian new rules have not been promulgated casually. Ashe believes that virtually ending all trade in African ivory in the United States — thus sending a message that ivory is valueless — is the best way to protect African elephants from the ravishes of poachers.

But that’s unrealistic and unproven. Today’s poaching problem has its roots in East Asia, where there is still a strong demand for and an active trade in new ivory objects. Demonizing older ivory objects to discourage possession of newer versions of similar items will not bring back the mammoths or save modern elephants from the economic forces that drive poachers.
Indeed, the International Ivory Society, on whose advisory board I sit, believes that taking valuable ivory objects out of circulation will only increase the market price for raw ivory abroad and put elephants in even more danger than at the present.

Everyone is rightly concerned with the plight of African elephants and the horrors that poachers are inflicting on herds across the continent. All of us want to find the right solution to stabilize elephant populations in Africa through sound economic and conservation policies. But the answer must not come at the expense of collectors who play such an important role in preserving important, interesting and revelatory objects in our cultural history.

About Godfrey Harris:
Godfrey Harris heads a public policy consulting firm in Los Angeles and is principal representative of the Political Action Network of the International Ivory Society. The above article ran in Jul. 22, 2014 issue of LA Times.