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RE: Ivory Affidavit of Origin

I appreciate what you are saying and respect you as a person. At least, unlike some others, you put your money where your mouth is and are speaking from experience. Seeing one species after another go extinct over the course of my life greatly saddens me as well.

I did a quick internet search and found a variety of results (there is still much debate among scientists, some that would disagree with you) but in most cases pigs, elephants and dogs are near the top under the obvious chimps, orangutans, etc and dolphins. This is obviously more than a passing interest for you, so I will defer to your knowledge and stand corrected. I also strongly agree with you; any endangered species should never be compromised under any circumstances. I believe we are both on the same page here. We both do whatever we can do and hope our actions are making an impact.

With that said, Glen took great pains to obtain legal ivory from animals killed many decades ago, prior to environmentalism and when elephants were relatively abundant, and used it for what I consider a noble cause. And I want to make it crystal clear; the restoration of this piano had zero impact on elephants currently living on the savannas of Africa.

Now here's the realist rather than the idealist speaking. I'm guessing if you had your way, you would collect and destroy, if possible, what I'm guessing is a fairly large inventory of old, legal ivory. I hope you realize that if this would occur, a certain demand for ivory would continue exist, right or wrong. Now with the old ivory inventories gone, the price of ivory would skyrocket and the slaughter of remaining elephants would go up proportionately. Basic supply and demand. Basic capitalism. Hopefully, since ivory is no longer pc in much of the world, this remaining old inventory of ivory will be here for a long time, reducing the demand for illegal, live ivory. This isn't my area of expertise, so if I'm wrong on this, please correct me.

What I don't understand though, are those that will pick one animal to protect and ignore, through their actions, other animals of roughly equal intelligence or even dumb animals that are suffering even more and at a much greater scale. In my post above, I just mentioned the suffering of pigs. What I didn't mention is the enormous environmental impact of these giant US corporate pig operations as well as the human health impact from the massive amounts of drugs required to keep these animals alive in such horrible conditions, resulting in all kinds of problems for humans. These two other factors don't exist with elephants, so I think the corporate animal industry is a much bigger issue. By reducing our consumption of these animals or eliminating it all together, we can all make a difference. What I'm talking about here is the big picture.

BTW, the level of poaching and abuse of animals in Costa Rica really shocked and saddened me, not at all what I expected. I learned a lot during our five years there and I could probably write a book about it. It's a very complicated issue, not at all black and white. So many variables. This experience really changed me especially what I experienced with NGOs and various "environmental" organizations, responsible directly or indirectly in many of these abuses.

Again, what I thought would be a fun discussion of a very interesting musical instrument has turned into something completely different, something that really took me by surprise. I am a silver lining guy though and on the bright side, I am getting a good eduction in the process. I really appreciate and admire folks like you; making sacrifices to do the right thing and educating others. I hope I am a better person for it.

Thank you.
Open up your mind, in pours the trash. - Meat Puppets, 1987



Edits: 05/08/15 05/08/15

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