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Comment by hashkb | Hacker News Reader

OK... how about rhino horn? Compared to rhinos, elephants are in zero danger. Not defending poachers, but this is the wrong thing to prioritize. (Also cheetahs, and probably a lot of other species)

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> Compared to rhinos, elephants are in zero danger.

Elephants are definitely NOT in zero danger. Certain species of Rhino are definitely virtually extinct (for example, there are only three known remaining specimen of the Northern white rhino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_white_rhinoceros) but elephants are in a pretty bad shape too. If the next 10 years are as bad as the last 10, they will be virtually extinct in the wild.

Furthermore, IIRC, the biggest consumer of illegal rhino horn isn't China but Vietnam.

How do you define elephants "in the wild"? Some African countries cull their elephant herds due to overpopulation. These tend to be on reserves, but we're talking massive chunks of land that would be considered "wild".

You can interpret "in the wild" is as places where the rangers might not be aware of all the specimen living in the reserve.

Even though some of these are technically reserves, some of them are pretty large

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsavo_East_National_Park is 13,747 km2/5,308 sq mi.

The park rangers have only a rough idea of how many elephants live in the reserve.

I feel somewhat qualified to speak on this since my startup, Pembient, biofabricates rhino horn. Basically, rhino horn has been banned in China since 1993. Despite that prohibition, much rhino horn still ends up in China, where it is used primarily for decorative purposes and not medicinal purposes as is widely reported [1].

From a policy perspective, bans often don't work because they induce a "forbidden fruit" effect [2]. Or, in the words of Walter Lippmann [3]:

"We find ourselves revolving in a circle of impotence in which we outlaw intolerantly the satisfaction of certain persistent human desires and then tolerate what we have prohibited. Thus we find ourselves accepting in their lawless forms the very things which in lawful form we repudiate, having in the end to deal not only with all the vices we intended to abolish but with the additional dangers which arise from having turned over their exploitation to the underworld."

It is especially strange seeing wildlife policy push further towards a "war on drugs" stance at the same time that many are claiming that war has been lost [4].

It will be interesting to see how things play out, but I believe policy in this area is fundamentally flawed and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, the animals will survive our blundering.

[1] https://wildlifejustice.org/cn/overlooked-rhino-horn-demand-...

[2] http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=33...

[3] http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1931feb-00065

[4] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/war-on-drugs-legaliza...

I was wandering as well if the ban won't drive the price up even more, just like the Prohibition did with alcohol.

Not everything has the same economics as illegal substances. Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal in the US but you don't see much of a black market for them. That's because they are perfectly replaceable by other goods, just like most luxury goods.

Ivory and tusks, rhino horn, pangolin scales, tiger penis, tiger pelts, tiger paws, turtle shells, shark fins, the list goes on and on and on... a trip to a generic street market in China and you can find endangered animal species parts being sold openly for shockingly cheap.

How about banning any and all animal products involved in the quackery "medicine" trade or ludicrous edible "delicacy" which are the driving force behind the problem to begin with?

If they are "shockingly cheap" and can be found in a street market, then they are probably not real.

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