Elephant tusks sold to raise money for conservation?

This story from National Geographic.com

The world's first legal ivory auctions in nearly a decade ended Thursday with four African nations selling more than a hundred tons of tusks to Chinese and Japanese traders for the equivalent of nearly 15 million U.S. dollars.

The money raised during the controversial week of sales will reportedly be used for African elephant conservation


MANY protests have been held to this and I cannot come to the conclusion on this myself. Many have argued that auctioning the ivory stockpiles would cause poaching to increase particularly in the central, eastern and western African elephant range states where poaching is not yet properly controlled. This point was argued by Kenya-based conservationist and paleontologist Richard Leakey on his blog Wednesday.

It's a tough one. If the ivory has been confiscated and sold to raise funds to help stop poaching does this help? Or should we never sell the ivory and dispose of it. I'm confused on this one, but I do believe that it's all such a mess.