Both African elephants and South American rainforests are being eliminated from the face of the earth. Elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory tusks and the rainforests are being slashed and burned for agriculture. Instead of killing all of these elephants and cutting down the rainforests, why not use vegetable ivory, a nut that grows in the South American rainforests instead?

Vegetable ivory comes from the Tagua nut that grows from the ivory nut palm of the rainforest. It produces a hard substance that can be used to make jewelry, is a desirable substitute for ivory from an elephant’s tusk and, unlike the elephant’s tusk, the Tagua palm is a renewable resource. Furthermore, one female ivory palm tree can produce as many ivory nuts as 1 elephant can produce ivory in a year. 

In conclusion, using the Tagua nut would be very helpful in protecting elephants and rainforests which may have medicines in them that we do not know about.