Hello all,

Interesting discussion on ivory. Down here in South Africa, we have
tons and tons of ivory which cannot be used for anything because of
the ban in ivory trade.

The national game parks shoot about 200 elephants a year (one park
only) because there are just too many. They have been storing all
this ivory for about 4 or 5 years now in the hope that the ban will
one day be lifted. There is so much extra ivory that they even had to
burn some  a while ago. I could buy  some to make piano keytops but
unfortunately I don't know how to make the tops from a tusk. I
believe one needs special tools.

I agree that it is disgusting to brutally murder an elephant (my
favourite animal) to butcher out its tusks. It is equally as
disgusting to butcher an original old piano by having to remove and
throw away its keytops because of some stupid law. An elephant had to
die for them long ago and throwing the tops away will not bring him
back to life.

Regards,
Bernt Damm