katysails wrote in message
...
My mother has an ivory necklace that has been handed down in our family
for
years and years...there are still Steinways with ivory keys out there...my
grandfather had ivory carvings (don't know who has them now...) All of it
was obtained before the embargo on ivory....I'm sure there are lots of
people who still have ivory in the US...

Elephants end up dying of natural causes like everything else and then the
ivory could be recovered without any slaughter. It has always seemed to me
that when the embargo was brought in it was stupid to burn literally tons of
ivory seized from poachers in the hope of discouraging them from killing
more elephants to replace it. All that was achieved by that waste of ivory
from elephants already dead was to make further poaching of ivory more
profitable.. Many beautiful things are made of ivory. It is the endemic
corruption of officials in Africa that prevents the poachers from being
taken out of circulation.