Illegal trafficking and the private sector

[Pajarita]

I agree 100%! Companies have to become more conscious of their role in this!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-f-ca ... 09296.html

[Wolf]

I don't know how many people looked at the picture and noticed what was there. Most of the items are carved items, jewelry, figurines and even buttons.

Except for certain collectors and the artists who made these items, the majority of the general public would never know the difference between the real ivory and most of the substitutes, many of which are natural and sustainable products, they just see a beautiful carved item. Any artist that has ever worked with ivory or any of the materials mentioned will know the difference in seconds. There is and has been a ban on ivory in the US for many years and every artist that has worked with this material has also know about this, it was artists that informed me of the ban some 25 years ago when I became interested in scrimshaw out in California. Still many of them also went out of their way to obtain this material in any way that they could. I did not pursue my interest in scrimshaw at the time and have not kept up with the artists that I knew back then.

While it would be helpful if the general population knew how to recognize these materials, it could also work against the conservation efforts as it could create an even larger demand for these products. But I feel that stronger penalties that were enforced from the level of the artist back to the sources of the ivory or other material would be the most likely to be effective as all of these people are already well aware of the impact on the wildlife that this has and they are the ones that are choosing to disregard the bans that they understand the reasons for. Just my opinion.

[Pajarita]

Well, I would think that the people who buy them know the difference -maybe not in the sense that they can tell by looking at an item whether it's actual ivory or something else but then people can't tell if something is made out of real gold or just plated and most can't even tell if a pearl is real or not but they still buy them.

In any case, I think that the gist of this article is that companies can do a lot to help with stopping the illegal trafficking - airlines can make sure they are not transporting them, jewelers and online sellers can refuse to sell them, that kind of thing. It might not stop it completely but the fact that buyers would have to go to shady sellers would make the purchases more difficult and stigmatize it further.