I hope they get new skills and do not poach other animals.
I'd prefer if the poachers actually all got arrested, and got new skills breaking big rocks into smaller rocks.
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.
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.
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.
It's true that the people need something else to feed their families, however western and Asian countries will have an easier time banning these products than providing these alternatives.
If the demand goes away, so will the supply.
Government wants to ban something which people want and some people willing to supply. Unless someone has strong private property right over elephants I don't see how these people are going to change. Ban might increase cost and risks and might lead to serious exploitation of the foot soldiers in this business but it is not going to be good for animals.
China could have imported 1000 elephants and could farmed them for their ivory.
They are more dissimilar than similar. Not all illegal goods have the same economics as illegal substances. Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal in the US, yet there isn't much of a market for them.
> Government wants to ban something which people want and some people willing to supply.
The situation is really different. When people go buy ivory, they are buying it to show off their wealth. Similarly, few rich people would buy a Faberge egg from a shady guy on the street, esp. if being seen with it in public (you know, the reason why you might be buying it in the first place) might raise question about the product's origin.
People want luxury goods, not necessarily ivory in particular. If you ban Ferraris, people will buy Lamborghinis. If you ban sports cars, they might buy yachts.
> China could have imported 1000 elephants and could farmed them for their ivory.
Do you know much about elephant husbandry? Disregarding ethical issues, it's not possible for financial and ecological reasons.
Dont see your point. Kinder would not have much demand even if it is illegal as it competes with many other similar products easily available. Ivory appears to me something very similar to marijuana or cocaine than Kinder eggs to me.
> When people go buy ivory, they are buying it to show off their wealth.
You don't have much idea about illegal trade. What makes you think the black market only has shady guys on street peddling smuggled items. Rich people extensively deal in illegal items and get them home delivered in armored car if needed.
> People want luxury goods, not necessarily ivory in particular.
I don't see much of logic. On the contrary Ivory might get far more desirable and much bigger status symbol once it is made illegal. You should remember that every illegal thing in a society eventually has exceptions for powerful. A hand-gun is a big status symbol in India and UK where gun control is hysterical. Same is likely to happen with Ivory.
This is entirely speculative. How do you know that the poachers don't have perfectly reasonable means of providing for their families, and are simply poaching because they make more money that way?
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.
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.