It has been an ongoing problem of how to keep species from going to extinct. The Economist has an interesting article that poses the question of "Is the prohibition of trade saving wildlife, or endangering it?"
This is very important question because many times what seems like an easy solution, can end up hurting the exact thing that you are trying to save. Not to rant to much but sometimes this is what divides two sides of most debates. I will go into this more at the end of this post but let’s take a look at what the article has to say first (my summary):
The ivory ban is frequently held up as a a successful agreement. It has claimed that populations have grown 4% since the agreement. This however is not the whole story because it has nothing to do with how many animals are being poached.
7.8% of Africa’s elephants are killed every year and it was 7% before the ban. Both the bird trade and the skins of big cats have gone down since the trade. The Rhino population hasn’t been as lucky and has fallen dramatically since the ban. The environmentalists have also tried breeding to counter act the loss in populations.
My solution: Privatized the animals. Allow people to buy them. I get the argument that you don’t want them to be killed for their fur and tusks. That is happening with the ban. If you allow people to own this animals they will assure that they will always be around.
We saw this in the United States with the buffalo. First they were going extinct and then people were allowed to own them. Now you can drive to Ruby Tuesdays and eat a bison burger no problem.
People are allowed to own cows, chickens, and pigs. If they weren’t, they would kill them for the meat and not resupply the source. Why would anyone breed chickens if they knew that they would go back out there and be taken by the next guy?
This is called the tragedy of the commons. Valuable resources will be killed and used until we hit zero unless you let people own them. If they allowed the population of their stocks go to zero here, they would be putting themselves out of business.
Capitalists and Environmentalist want the same ends, which are the animals to live and not go extinct. The difference is our means and the Capitalists have been proven right constantly.
Privatization is the forgotten tool of the Environmentalists.
