Elephant hunting in Kenya at least one member of "Kenya's royal family" (the Kenyatta) had shipped over six tons of ivory to China. In the 1970s, 1900 elephants were killed in Kenya for their ivory tusks, increasing to 8300 elephants in the 1980s. In 1989, as a dramatic gesture to persuade the world to halt the ivory trade, President Daniel arap Moi ignited twelve tons of elephant tusks. In the 1990s the widespread ban on commercial ivory trading reduced the industry to a fraction of what it had been and elephant populations have stabilised. But illegal poaching and sale on the black market still
Scarcity on the other hand has a high production cost. It has to be found and processed, both of which require a great deal of resources. Additionally, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be pursued at the same time; trade-offs are made of one goal against others. In an influential 1932 essay, Lionel Robbins defined economics as "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". In cases of monopoly or monopsony an artificial scarcity can be created. Scarcity can also occur through stockpiling, either as an attempt to