"We have tons of ivory sitting in vaults, gathering dust. Let us sell it. If we flood the market, prices will drop, and poachers will have no reason to kill our elephants." It sounds like a solution, logical, understandable, the kind of idea that fits neatly into an economics textbook: more supply, lower prices, less crime. But the world of ivory doesn't play by those rules. It isn't a clean market driven by transparency and rational behavior. It's a shadow economy built on secrecy, speculation, and status. And every time the world tries to "flood the market," the only thing that rises is the killing. The Experiment Years ago, the world tried it. In 1999 and again in 2008, CITES approved "one-off" ivory sales from southern Africa to Japan and China. Trucks rolled out from government warehouses, carrying tusks from elephants that had died of natural causes or culling. For a brief moment, the plan seemed to work. Ivory was sold legally, and money flowed into conservation funds. But beneath the surface, something else was stirring. Criminal syndicates watched closely. For them, the legal sale was a gift. Suddenly, it was easy to move illegal ivory again and all they had to do was mix it with the legal batches. Once ivory entered the market, who could tell which tusk came from an elephant that died twenty years ago and which came from one killed last week in the forest? Within months, ivory carving factories in Asia were running overtime. Demand skyrocketed, not because ivory was cheaper, but because people saw it being sold again and thought it was acceptable. "Legal" ivory rekindled desire.