I THOUGHT I had heard that wild elephant herd protection measures had become good enough that the populations were now prevailing against the remaining poachers.
It would seem to me that radiocarbon dating could help identify the approximate age of a piece of ivory, if there is a serious question about its being antique or new. And I could see requiring new ivory to have certifications to its legitimacy, if poaching remained a serious problem.
But going head over heels for environmentalism seems to be a hallmark of our modern liberals.
Well, unless you can come up with a cheap, accurate, carbon-14 dating machine, its impossible to tell “new” ivory from old ivory. Ive seen a lot of “old” ivory WINK WINK sold in souvenir shops when on vacation. Needless to say, I didn’t buy any. I have very mixed feeling about such a law (NOTE: I SAID, LAW). Not what passes for a law these days.
The galling part of this, is that for Westerners, anyway, the value of ivory is not in the material, but the craftsmanship of the work that went into carving it. I believe that the Japanese came up with a material YEARS AGO that duplicates perfectly the carving and material properties of ivory (they did large aquatic mammal teeth for scrimshaw, too). There is no good reason for anyone to make anything whatsoever anymore out of the real materials, period.