The United States Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday dropped six tons of confiscated ivory tusks and trinkets into a rock crusher near Denver, turning contraband that officials estimated was worth tens of millions of dollars into rubble.

Everything you need to know can be explored in the Denver Post and at this Fish and Wildlife Service link and in a helpful background sheet on the operation here.

Bryan Christy, who last year wrote “Ivory Worship,” a stellar investigative report on the Asian ivory trade for National Geographic, posted a piece earlier in the week putting this event in broader context and stressing there’s much more to be done — as the Obama administration clearly understands.

Smuggling of ivory into or through the United States remains a significant problem. Click here to review the case of Victor Gordon, the owner of an African art and antiques store in Philadelphia. He is scheduled for sentencing early next year after pleading guilty to charges related to a smuggling operation in which new ivory was carved in traditional designs and stained so that the resulting objects resembled antiques.

But China still dominates the illegal trade.

[Insert, 11:47 a.m.] Michael `t Sas-Rolfes, an economist with a free-market orientation on wildlife conservation, thinks the Wildlife Service move could backfire. Here’s an excerpt from his critique, published a few days ago by the Denver Post:

Fish and Wildlife officials seem to think that destroying the stockpile will send out a message to the market, garner support for elephant conservation, and deter poachers. But this assumed cause-and-effect relationship is not at all clear or even valid: The message sent to existing illegal suppliers and consumers may in fact be perverse. Economists argue that if you are trying to protect an endangered species, then limiting the supply of its products can be counterproductive. If demand remains unchanged, supply reduction simply raises perceptions of scarcity and drives up prices. This effect may be accentuated in East Asian cultures where possession of rare and illegal items is often seen as prestigious and where some may speculatively invest for potential commercial extinction. The net result is increased rewards to poachers and intensified poaching effort.

Read the rest here.

Christy, who was at the ivory crushing event yesterday, at the National Wildlife Property Repository, posted two valuable thoughts on Twitter:

US crushes ivory on land where 30 million bison once roamed. Will elephants be Africa’s bison? //t.co/UYoFLT34Kf — Bryan Christy (@BryanChristy) 15 Nov 13

Here, his photograph provides a vivid reminder that African elephants are hardly the only species imperiled by poaching and smuggling: