From CBS News

It sounded like a big deal: a public gathering in iconic Times Square where more than a ton of ivory would be ceremoniously crushed.

But more than showcasing conservation efforts, the event Friday demonstrated the world’s inability to save elephants who are being killed – one every 15 minutes – for their ivory. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into anti-poaching efforts, the decline of the elephants has only worsened.

More than 100,000 elephants were killed from 2010 to 2012 – almost 96 each day – to supply the appetite of China’s growing middle class and markets elsewhere in Asia for all things ivory.

Just last month, the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society, one of the key supporters of Friday’s crush, announced that Mozambique’s elephant population dropped from just over 20,000 to about 10,300 during a five-year period, reflecting rampant poaching by organized crime rings.

A popular way to speak out against poaching is to stage an “ivory crush.” Thirteen nations have held crushes since 1989, destroying 300,000 pounds of ivory. But Daniel Stiles, a member of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group, questions the benefits of these crushes.

Criminal gangs, he said, writing in The Guardiannewspaper, are unlikely to be deterred, and crushing may even send a message that scarce ivory is only getting scarcer.

“Ivory workshop owners in high ivory consumption countries such as China and Thailand have already begun buying any and all African ivory they can get their hands on,” Stiles wrote. “If stockpiles are going to be destroyed, and legal ivory is unavailable, and more illegal shipments are being seized because of more vigilant law enforcement, workshop owners realise they need to stockpile as many tusks as possible for future use, because the senseless system now in operation, in which domestic ivory markets are legal while raw ivory to supply them is illegal, is guaranteeing extinction of the elephant.”

Read more at CBS News