Hi Ed,
I'm a lutenist/guitarist living in Cambria, California. My wife has worked
with elephants for years, so I asked her about the culling of herds and legal
status of ivory, etc. She says they tried to legalize it to discourage the
poachers, but that it hadn't seemed to stop the poaching; and it was still hard
to ascertain if any ivory you were getting was really legal or not. At the
moment there is no legal ivory trade. Culling the herds is a polite way to
describe murder (no, I'm not one of those PETA people); the elephants are shot
indiscriminately, usually from a helicopter, when the herd starts to encroach
and endanger villages, or to 'thin' the herd. My wife worked with two elephants
whose parents were killed in a culling. So anyway, this 'culling' is not
some benign process. Fortunately, judging from the replies to your questions,
ivory doesn't seem to be a very desirable tone material. What is mammoth ivory?
I talked to a scrimshaw artist once who said it came from fisherman's nets?
For those luthiers or players thinking about using ivory, I would suggest
typing in ivory trade on your internet search engine; you'll find links to the
CITES organization, and other news updates about what's going on in the African
and Asian ivory business.
Sincerely,
James Edwards
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