[BenLurkin]

Insane waste.

[ClearCase_guy]

When the supply is dramatically diminished, what is likely to happen to the value of the remaining product? I wonder if the poachers have done the math.

[hosepipe]

Ivory is NOW 10,000 dollars a pound..

[hosepipe]

Ivory is NOW 10,000 dollars a pound..

[vladimir998]

Auction off the ivory. Then use the money to hire armed guards to protect the elephant herds. That would make more sense.

[Steamburg]

The left fails at math again. Perhaps, spending the money to flood the market with good fake ivory would be a real message.

What part of rarity of commodity do these socialists fail to understand?

[Lazamataz]

I would prefer they put the ivory back on the elephants.

[Arm_Bears]

How about a market solution allowing private individuals to outright own elephants and attendant ivory products?

Among other things, instead of finding dead elephants one would be finding dead poachers.

[Kozak]

And just made the ivory NOT in the governments possession more valuable.

[Iron Munro]

Here is the message:

The USA Is Now Governed By Clueless Idiots.

[Jedidah]

I hate this. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Talibanish.

[Iron Munro]

In a supply/demand economy these jerks just reduced the supply and did nothing to reduce demand.

The end result of destroying “old” ivory is to increase pressure to harvest more “new” ivory, not less.

[MosesKnows]

The U.S. has been trying to stop it

There are always unintended consequences in the world of central planning. Perhaps that thought could be best expressed thusly, "unrevealed consequences”.

A consequence, unrevealed or unintended, is that the U.S. creates employment for people whose continued employment is dependent on continued ivory poaching.

[Conspiracy Guy]

The poachers already got their money. How stupid and wastfull.

[Dutch Boy]

The entire worldwide elephant population is 500,000. They are vanishing at a rate of 50,000 per year, just for their ivory.

That phrase reminds me of the number of square miles of rain forest being cleared in Brazil. It's very measurable but will likely not reflect reality. Just like Brazil deforestation, the calculated rate of demise will reach 0 long before the reality.

[lurk]

Another moment when the word government means something a bit less complimentary.

[IMR 4350]

The poachers already made their money, they don’t care what they do with the ivory.

The middle man might be PO’d, but not the poachers.

[DJ Taylor]

"What if instead of crushing that ivory, the US auctioned the ivory with all proceeds going to African nations for anti-poaching efforts?

Some of the reports coming out of Africa indicate that much of this ivory poaching is done by the same agents the government hired to protect these elephants.

[BitWielder1]

How is destruction of valuable materials supposed to fix anything?
Here's what they could have done:
Make Old Ivory legal. New Ivory is already illegal.
Spread some harmless but easily identified isotope across elephant territory, that from then on will be detectable in all new ivory.

[rdcbn]

A smarter thing to do would be to dump it all on the market at once, which would depress prices and make ivory hunting less profitable