Very few ivory lovers could tell whether beautiful rings, necklaces, belt buckles and carved knife handles are made from the modified dentin of enlarged elephant incisors or the dried hemicellulose of palm seeds. The only drawback of ivory-nuts is their size. However, milled nuts can be fused into a larger, solid mass with modern bonding cements under heat and pressure. A nother ecological incentive for using vegetable ivory is that renewed trade in tagua nuts could help protect endangered rain forests in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. According to a Massachusetts-based environmental group called Cultural Survival, natural rain forest products such as vegetable ivory can generate up to five times the income of banana plantations and cattle ranches.
M eanwhile the tropical forests and their inhabitants are rapidly being destroyed.
The devastation of the earth's tropical rain forests is analogous to a worldwide burning of libraries without ever reading any of the books. Maybe tagua nuts can help save at least a part of these beautiful rain forests before it's too late, and at the same time help to preserve one of the most magnificent mammals that ever roamed the earth. Seed Jewelry References Armstrong, W.P. 1991. Armstrong, W.P. 1991. Armstrong, W.P. 1992.