If you have been following the news on the ivory ban you
know people are polarized on the subject of ivory.
One side claims elephants are being slaughtered left and
right for their tusks and ivory should be banned from the US markets. The other side claims we should protect the
elephant by assisting the countries who are attempting to stem the
poaching. This side also claims the
vast, vast majority of ivory, legal and illegal, is sold to the Far East and China.
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| 700 African elephant tusk seized by Malaysian authorities on their way to China |
The politics and enforcement of stopping ivory poaching by
making ivory illegal are convoluted and difficult. One small example is teeth from the sperm
whale. These cone shaped teeth are
prized for their value in scrimshaw. By
1988 civilized nations stopped hunting the endangered sperm whales.
So to protect these whales, scrimshaw art drawn in the 1800s
and 1900s on teeth from whales killed then are taken from their owners and
destroyed. No rational explanation seems
forth coming on how this helps whales in 2015.
This same approach is applied to ivory. The USFWS (US Fish and Wildlife Service) has
moved to block the sale and when possible, effect the confiscation of ivory. Your problem is you have to prove your ivory
isn’t elephant and wasn’t collected since the US ban on elephant ivory in
1986.
USFWS and their agents simply
assumed it is illegal elephant ivory and will take your property as well as
anything else you might have.
USFWS has had its funding for this search and destroy
mission blocked. So states are jumping
on the bandwagon. I suspect politicians
realize the relatively small number of ivory collectors, knife makers,
musicians, and scrimshaw artists and the wealth of their pocketbooks make them
vulnerable. After all the few votes politicians
lose are nothing compared to the votes and publicity they gain by taking an meaningless
anti-poaching stand. States like New
York and New Jersey have these politicians and frankly, they don’t care about the
people in their state. California, Iowa,
Washington, and Connecticut are introducing these bills.
So it comes as no surprise that a 72-year old woman was
arrested in New York for trying to sell a necklace containing mammoth ivory at
an antique show.
You should realize that
all mammoths were extinct long before our country was founded.
I have an old walking stick that was owned by my wife’s
grandfather. He came over third class
from the old country to make a better life for himself. My mother-in-law describes him as “a sport.” So it’s not surprising there are several
quarter inch-square chips of ivory forming a collar set in the dark wood.
If the government has its way, I’ll never be able to sell
that stick or quite possibly give it away.
I don’t have any ivory handled knives, but I do have several white bone
knives. Will I have to prove, someday, after
they are confiscated that they are not ivory?
I urge you to contact your representatives, both federal and
state, and urge them not to support the ban on ivory trade. Urge them to support laws that protect legally
owned ivory.
I once read that the
slippery slope argument was a logical falsity.
Maybe at the debate contest, but to people working in the actual world
it’s a truth. Don’t let political
bureaucrats and politicians push you down the ivory slopes.
