Elephant decline revealed by shipwreck cargo | Hacker News Reader

Elephant decline revealed by shipwreck cargo

bbc.com

152 pointsThevet38 comments

You guys should consider donating to David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[0][1] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans. For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [2][3].

There is also the the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[4][5] which fights poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[6] is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

[0] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[2] https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans/murit

[3] http://instagram.com/p/sigT3IAUKb

[4] http://www.iapf.org/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

Another key vector is to reduce demand for ivory. The world needs to pressure the government of China, which drives demand and global ivory prices.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09993-2

Has synthetic ivory gotten good enough to replace the natural source? Is it too expensive? Too easily distinguished? Demand too great?

One way to check for real v fake ivory is to heat a pin in a lighter and then try and poke a little hole. Real ivory doesn't melt at all, and a lot of imitation ivory does, and that is a very easy and expedient test.

Thank you. Ideally we can blur the lines between these two, so that the price for one is ruined because they can't be distinguished.

Mammoth ivory is actually not as expensive as you might expect, that’s about as good as you can get

What is it for? The only application that I know of is to make trinkets and baubles. The desire for that kind of thing is a good test to separate humans from animals.

China banned all ivory trade at the end of 2017 and by all accounts (see WWF and NG sources cited in the tweet) it's been working quite well.

https://www.twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/13397828106309...

Yet the paper you reply to is written in sep 2019 and states that the Chinese market is still a massive influence. Don't you think that outweighs your tweet from 2018 from some guy?

The reports I linked to argue that (i) demand has been significantly reduced. The paper I replied to argues that (ii) a reduction of demand is significantly correlated with a reduction of poaching. Not only is there no "outweighing" of the former by the latter, but the former depends for its point on the latter (i.e. there is no reason to care if (i) is true unless (ii) is true).

The tweet is from this month. The NG article is from 2018, but the WWF article postdates the Nature article.

I read the linked tweets, and found them pretty vague.

Ivory powder is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), so it's more likely than not that China won't stop killing elephants (or rhinos.) Additionally, exotic TCM ingredients are considered to be a status symbol, so price is no object.

In addition, there's a new development. The CCP is intruding into Asian and African countries using Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a pretext, and even positioning armies there. This could well accelerate poaching.

I think you mean well, but consider the source of your information before being argumentative.

The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is where wild elephants go to seek medical attention because they know there are helpful humans there.

If you want to help the elephants and don't know whom to donate to, consider the conservation foundation trusted by the elephants themselves.

I was really excited to sponsor the actual elephant you linked in 2/3, until I realized it was pictures from 2014 :(

I’ll have to find another cute one now, I suppose.

wow this is super cool, will be considering doing this...

Population of Africa in 1500: 46 million

in 1913: 127 million

in 1998: 760 million

by 2100: 4.3 billion

"You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF's money on buying condoms." Sir Peter Scott, founder of the World Wildlife Fund

It's a bit ironic that this evidence of past ecological crimes was unearthed by a current ecological crime: strip mining the sea floor for diamonds.

super interesting find...(quite literally) elephants are beautiful creatures, and amazing, majestic ones too. Please stop killing them for ivory.

This is good to know, and this history and reactions to it are pretty various.

In the past, ivory was used to make:

- pool and billiard balls.

- piano keys.

- handles.

Can these elephants be cloned to inject diversity into existing hurds?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com