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 value Scarcity value Scarcity value is the economic factor that increases an item's relative price based more upon its relatively low supply. Whereas the prices of newly manufactured products depends mostly on the "cost of production" (the cost of inputs used to produce them, which in turn reflects the scarcity of the inputs), the prices of many goods—such as antiques, rare stamps, and those raw materials in high demand—reflects the scarcity of the products themselves. In terms of partial-equilibrium supply and demand, the markets where prices are "cost-determined" have a supply curve that is very elastic or even horizontal, so that