Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Kenya burns stockpile of ivory

Good idea.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36176756

I heard that story on NPR news.

It seems, despite the new ivory laws/regulations, elephant poaching for their ivory is still a lucrative trade for extremely desperate and poor poachers in these African countries where elephants live in the wild. And, it seems to me the governments of these countries would do more to help provide legitimate and lawful jobs for these individuals who become poachers. Not to get into socioeconomic politics, but people and their families who are starving will do most anything to make money to buy food or whatever...

Some of the news commentators were saying that efforts like this (burning/destroying thousands of pounds of illegal ivory) will not stop the poachers, and will only make it worse, because the ivory being destroyed will only make the supply less and the demand more. Seems to me the elephants were already dead, and that much ivory could have been sold legally by the government, and the money spent on helping the poor and desperate citizens who become poachers in order to feed their families in these countries.

It's a shame that owners of older pianos with ivory key-tops and other musical instruments have to suffer because of mis-guided and ineffective enforcement of poaching laws.

The black rhino is all but extinct because of the same ineffective and poorly enforced poaching laws.

Just my .02.

Rick

I believe only one white male rhino left

Ian

Good points. But provenance is so difficult to determine...

I am sad to see such a beautiful material being destroyed.

Piano players can easily go without ivory. But artists do make wonderful works of art.

There will be a way to have legal ivory, over time, from dead elephants.

We are not there yet obviously. Maybe some day.... In the meantime killing elephants ensures their ultimate demise. And that is no good.

My two cents

Like the drug war, you have to dry up the demand. Lacking that, all notions of laws, nobility, enforcement, are out the window. There is no impermeable membrane given a sufficient pressure differential. As long as on the one side you have the newly wealthy asians continuing their fetish for ivory and the great poverty in rural africa on the other, no amount of hard to enforce laws will stop the flow. Burning this cache, while symbolic, only increases the price by highlighting the rarity.

Kurt

That has reduced supply so will keep up the price and make poaching more economically viable.

Gestures like this are made frequently and have had no effect on poaching.

Elephants die, and die with ivory in their head. So why not use it?

Now had he fought corruption so that the supply of ivory was properly monitored and those responsible for poaching were arrested and everybody in the illegal supply chain arrested, given a fair trial and punished, that would have been of some use.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. What I do feel is that the ivory trade grew up in a time when we, as a species, were not as enlightened about certain issues as we are now. I don't think that using ivory from elephants who die naturally is wrong as Philip has suggested, just as I don't think medical research on our deceased is wrong although I respect that it is subject to permissions. However, because the trade has been abused, and I am certain that the early ivory trade saw the killing of several healthy adult elephants for no other reason than to harvest their tusks, perhaps an outright ban is really the only way forward for the protection of the species.

Whether burning the existing ivory, or banning the trade will actually work is a different matter. I'm not so sure if this was the right course of action or not, but it does send a signal out to the world that, officially anyway, ivory is no longer available from that particular source and it is no longer legal to harvest it from that particular source. Does this protect elephants? I don't know, but I hope so.

It's topical for us as pianists for obvious reasons - although piano keyboards use very little ivory from a tusk, but that use still requires a dead elephant. Of course, I think it's ridiculous that pianos with ivory keyboards are subject to harsh customs laws - it's illogical in so many respects - but it's easier for authorities to do blanket bans than it is for them to get into the nuances of what's actually happening, and that means it's harder for end users.

I know that a new ivory keyboard covering can, in the UK, be fitted to any piano, legally, should a customer have enough money to pay for it. I don't know where the stock of ivory comes from for that. My own personal view is that all piano factories and restoration companies need to stop offering ivory as an option on their keyboards, and I was really disappointed to hear that some makers were still offering new ivory to customers on new and restored instruments.

Factory use of real ivory stopped in the U.S. by 1960, and worldwide by 1990 per the sticky thread about it. IIRC, that info was researched by Sally Phillips.

Only in as much as it takes that quantity OFF the market FOREVER is it somehow a "Good" thing.

The alternatives being;
a) Lock it up until someone bribes "the holder of the keys".
b) Put it on the market to lower black market prices and thereby make poaching less attractive - hopefully use the proceeds to some good purpose, e.g. elephant protection.

Unfortunately burning it DOES raise the black market price, so poaching becomes somewhat more attractive to those already positioned and poised to do so.

IMO one should not underestimate the need to get the idea into the public sphere that killing elephants for their tusks is wrong. In that sense the burning ceremony may have an importance going beyond purely economic considerations.

Too many crimes in this world go unnoticed and uncriticized.

Very true.

Another factor in the equation is the rampant corruption within the government in some of these countries. There is some corruption within all governments in every country in the world. Sometimes it is discovered and challenged, and sometimes it is just accepted as business as usual.

As we say here in the south, you can create/pass laws till the cows come home, but enforcing them is a different story.

Rick

I agree, but there will always be enough people who just BELIEVE that only "fer real" elephant ivory is good enough - for THEM.

Somewhere (on the web, where else ? or maybe in conversation) I read/heard that there is an alternative tusk that is NOT regulated and is in abundant supply.
Supposedly it is "indistinguishable" from elephant tusk ivory once installed as key tops.
Doubtless SOME self proclaimed con_I_sewers believe that they can tell the difference

It may have been Walrus tusks, whale bone, or wild boar, I didn't pay it much attention.

Techno_weenie that I am... I am tempted to believe that ivory from tusks of elephants that have died of natural causes COULD be distinguished from those slaughtered for profit.
Don't ask me HOW (yet) I just have faith in technology (forensics specifically)
I have less problem with the use of body parts of those that have died naturally.

Some good sense regulation could be possible.

They were trying to breed it with a female, not sure of the outcome.

Let's hope he comes

Ian

C. Bechstein used ivory on a piano recently, there was an article about it in our newspapers about 18 months ago. Blüthner's will fit an ivory keyboard on request to any customer providing they can have the piano exported to their territory. I know of about 5 new ivory keyboards that have been used on rebuilds in the last 3 years.

Bear in mind that manufacturers that offer "ivory" key tops on new pianos are almost certainly not using elephant ivory. Tons of mammoth ivory tusks have been dug up and are being used for piano keys. I don't know that I approve of the practice, in part because it causes confusion. But then I was raised on plastic keys and have never considered ivory to be a superior material.

Larry.

It doesn't say what kind of ivory has been used here, but it says that Bechstein made two keyboards - one with, and one without ivory in order to allow the piano to travel to countries where ivory can't be imported.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jun/07/ivory-keys-bechstein-piano-dismays-environmentalists

In my own humble opinion, this is complete decadence, and they should have just stayed with the synthetic key tops. It was 2013 after all.....

IMHO there's nothing wrong with using and selling ivory. The problem is that wild animals are killed illegally to get it.

I think the best solution would be to make sure enough cheap ivory is available.

Not if "enough" is more than all the ivory on living animals throughout the world.

If the existing stockpiles of ivory exceed demand then there is no need to kill any more elephants to source it. Then elephants dying naturally would supply a certain amount.