THERE are at least 400,000 elephants in Africa and about 8,000 of them die of natural causes each year. In 2015 about 20,000 elephants were poached. The dead elephants would have produced a total of 196 tonnes of ivory at 7kg per elephant. If half the ivory from natural deaths found its way into official stocks, that would have amounted to 28 tonnes, leaving 168 tonnes to be exported illegally to the Far East, mainly China.In a recent study by elephant expert Daniel Stiles, most of the ivory was found to go to speculators with a fraction, say 20 tonnes, going to the carving trade. The balance of 148 tonnes would have had a wholesale value of $148m, which is small in investment-market terms: it would need only 148,000 Chinese people, or 0.01% of the population, investing $1,000 each.The current remedies for reducing poaching are law enforcement and demand reduction. Law enforcement, while essential, is difficult and expensive and has not proved successful over a period of many years....
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