When You Ban the Sale of Ivory, You Ban Elephants | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute

When You Ban the Sale of Ivory, You Ban Elephants | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: "in some parts of southern Africa today “Damaged land and crop losses are not only being tolerated, but villages are doing their best to guard against poachers. This surprising change in behavior is due to the proliferation of government programs that dispense licenses to villages, enabling locals, or paying hunters, to cull an allotted number of elephants each year.” In these areas poaching is down and some farmers have turned their marginal farms into game reserves."

"In essence, elephants need to be treated like cattle. Their owners—or the equivalent, such as villagers living near elephants—need to benefit from the animals’ preservation."

“In Zimbabwe, for example, loss of ivory revenues led to a scaling back of anti-poaching operations which resulted in 100 illegally killed elephants in 1990 as opposed to only ten illegal deaths a year earlier.”