Ivoryseeker:
Thank you for joining us on bushdrums. Though we may not always agree with one another, we do appreciate hearing one another's points of view.
I think most people would have no problem with items being made from mammoth since it is already extinct, PROVIDING it could be proven it was indeed mammoth and not ivory. The only way that could be done is by sending items to the University of Washngton DNA lab. It would be time consuming and very expensive to do so. The same would apply to "bone" products. If the seller wished to go to that expense himself, have a certificiate showing a picture of the item that has been tested and verified as mammoth/bone , then I don't think people would have any problem with that.
You say that ivory and mammoth look different. However, ivory itself looks different depending on the area in which the elephant was poached. For instance, ivory from the forest elephants has a pinkish hue compared to other ivory. Some tusks have many small cracks in them - others are completely smooth. Some are very white while others have a yellowish hue.
A number of us have been following the ivory sales on eBay. When the news came out that it could be sold only within the US and not ivory items brought into the US, all of a sudden the Chinese shops said the ivory was coming from an address in the US (?friend, acquaintance?). Dishonest.
Then, when eBay was talking about putting a ban on ivory items, strangely the very same items previously shown as ivory all of a sudden became mammoth or bone. ? Dishonest?
You may not be aware, but since CITES allowed the sale of ivory to China, poaching has rise dramatically and elephants are being decimated.
China has become "friends" in almost every African country. The Chinese are now asking all the indigenous people to sell them all the ivory they find - thus encouraging those hungry indigenous people who wouldn't ordinarly think of poaching to now consider killing elephants. I know this from personal experience on one of my trips there.
There is no adequate regulation to protect elephants, their ivory or the sale of such. On eBay recently there were some beautiful ivory necklaces from a jeweler in Hawaii. The US Fish and Wildlife certificate shown was for 2,400 pieces of jewelry in 1987!!! Those 2,400 pieces could have been sold 10 years ago and the certificate being used for ivory jewelry shipped from China last week from an elephant killed a month ago.
Most of the members of bushdrums are wildlife lovers. Most, if not all of us, have made many trips to Africa and have seen the marked decrease in the elephant population as well as many other species. Many of us support wildlife organizations in Africa to try to help make a small difference in helping Africans save their wildlife. Anything we can do to help stop the decimation of wildlife is important to us.
Prove to me your pieces are indeed mammoth and I'd be willing to buy from you.
