Why do ivory poachers kill elephants to harvest their tusks? My girlfriend’s son just stumped me with that one. He saw a TV show about ivory poachers, but they (apparently) didn’t explain why the elephants were killed when all the people wanted were the tusks.
My guess was that the poachers need to work fast (and don’t care about elephants being endangered) and can’t wait for a sedative. Plus, I’d imagine any animal can be dangerous if they awake to find you hacking at their face with a saw.
Obviously, female elephants get by without tusks. So it is possible for an elephant to live without tusks. The harvested elephant would be at a disadvantage, but at least he’d be alive. And eventually, his tusks would grow back, wouldn’t they? Could there be a market for, uh, farm-grown ivory?
Not really speed as cost. Bullets are cheaper than sedatives.
As for living without them, I would think so but they will not grow back so it could cause problems.
A few years ago, some conservation groups started a program to dehorn rhinos.
I believe that the rhino needs to be re-dehorned now and then because the horn is like a hoof and continues to grow. (There is no chemical treatment to retard this growth.)
Some resisted this idea out of fear that trauma to the rhinos would outweigh the possible benefits. So far, the occasionally capture and dope hasn’t hurt the rhino – although it is expensive.
Tusks are teeth. Do they continue to grow? I looked here, but got lazy and started feeling guilty about fooling around on a school night - http://elephantcare.org/dental2.htm
Anaesthetising any large animal is risky. The large body mass ‘absorbs’ the anaesthetic. This means it’s very easy to overdose the critter before it starts showing signs of being fully under. It then goes under deeper and deeper until… Once the drug is in there’s no way to get it out, and the antidotes are far from perfect.
Elephants have big problems if they lie down for any length of time. The lungs aren’t meant to function like that. As a result they are prone to collapse, oedema and pneumonia.
These two factors mean that anaesthetising an elephant would not be a job for an amateur.
Administering an anaesthetic to a big animal via a dart would be very hard. By the time the drug took effect it could well be a lethal dose.
Once you have anaesthetised the elephant it needs to be covered in a tent and moderately restrained. This stops it dying of exposure and prevents it trying to stand up before it has recovered. If it does it can easily fall and break bones.
Many if not all poachers are just labourers. They don’t have access to aneasthetics. If they started stealing these things then it would set off alarm. Poaching is illegal in most countries, hence the reason why it is called poaching and not hunting.
Most poachers aren’t rich. They get 3/ of 5/8 of SFA in terms of retail value f the ivory. Anaesthetic is expensive. Even if they could steal it, they’d rather sell it than waste it on an elephant. Bullets only cost a couple of bucks.
These people don’t give a toss about elephants. If they cared they probably wouldn’t be killing them. Even if it were fairly easy, the little extra inconvenience would be a enough to stop them I suspect.
Elephant tusks are used to push over trees. They are very well anchored in the jaw. A substantial proportion of the saleable ivory is therefore in the jaw. Just cutting the tusk off at the skin would probably cost you 1/3 of the total weight of the tusk. Removing the internal tusk from a live animal would be a massive operation. Wisdom tooth extractions in people can take hours. Imagine what it would be like when the root of the tooth is 3 feet into the jawbone. Then you’d need massive antibiotic doses to stop infection. Many poachers can’t get antibiotics to save the lives of their families, much less have a couple of kilos to waste on a jumbo.
Poaching is a crime. Many places shoot poachers. Poaching is done fast. On shot, hack the face off with an axe and POQ. Waiting around at least half an hour for the animal to collapse, then another few hours for recovery is just not an option.
Removing the tusks from anaesthetised elephants has been suggested before. Apart from all the problems Blake and others have mentioned, there is the additional problem that making ivory available from legitimate sources stimulates a market for the product, which in turn encourages poaching.
Tusks do continue to grow throughout an elephant’s life but would not grow back quickly enough to serve any practical purpose if they had been sawn off an adult animal.
There is always a market for rare items and materials since some jerk is always willing to buy something that lets him say “oooo lookit me, I have something rare I’m special!”
Not only is there a market, but at least a few countries can (and do) leagally sell ivory. They are granted x number of permits annually and “cull” elephants, sell their ivory and hopefully, use the money for infrastructure. I’ll be back with a site in a few…
bonzer - Wish you hadn’t made that point about nose hair. Because of conversations with large mammal curators and their farriers (who deal with rhino horns), I am now going to spend the rest of my life wishing a blacksmith would show up every time I see an older man with too much nose hair. This is not good. Not good at all.
[pointless rant]Incidentally - if you want to learn more about de-horning rhinos, I do not recommend “Horn of Darkness.” That book, IMHO, should have been called “Horn of Darkness: Attack of the stupid white people who shouldn’t be allowed to drive in Fresno, CA, let alone in the Namib desert.” I wouldn’t trust the authors of that book to be able to distinguish between my cat and my dog, let alone study rhinos.[/pointless rant]