The Battle for Nature

The WWF enables ivory trade

The real WWF (the wildlife preservation society - World Wild Fund) has been fighting vigilantly against the unlawful poaching and hunting of endangered animals. Perhaps in a seemingly surprising and contradictory act this same WWF has allowed the sale of some sixty tons of ivory to Japan this Saturday. The claim is that this ivory was collected from animals that have died naturally, of old age or diseases. Although this claim is being researched as to it's validity the sale is taking place. It seems to be a simple and straight forward thing but this is not the case.

A problem

The issue here is a complex one. The problem is that the whole point of prohibiting the sale of ivory is to prevent the slaying of endangered animals. Once the ivory has reached the market it is already too late. The animals are already dead. However, hunters will only hunt for ivory if there is a market. As soon as people do not buy ivory there is no incentive to acquiring it. From here you can conclude that even ivory collected in an environmentally healthy way preserves the market of illegal ivory and thus encourages hunting. There are all kinds of things that can be done to circumvent this problem. For example, the ivory could be sold only under a special licence that marks the ivory as 'kosher'. Another option is selling the ivory for such a low price that it will not be worthwhile for poachers to risk life and limb.