The thing with Ivory is its the only part of the animal thats valuable – if there was a market for elephant-ear rugs, elephant trunk draft excluders, elephant burgers etc then farming might be sort of viable. But because its only a tiny part of the animal that has a value, even if its a spurious one, its not worth farming one but it is worth someone poaching one.
Doubtless a lot of the value of ivory is its a trophy – that its had to have been pursued and hunted, the market would lose interest in something that wasn’t rare and hard-won.
But… those collectors don’t need to know – there needs to be a was a way of secretly farming ivory, using smaller, cheaper to rear, easier to hide animals then selling that into the black market. Thats why in my secret laboratory I’m conducting cruel and unusual experiments to see if I can genetically graft the DNA to produce tusks onto more conveniently sized animals. I’ve had mixed results so far – A cat with a trunk, a dog that produces a 150kg of shit everyday and a goldfish that never forgets.
