Ivory

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.

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.

Since my original posting in June 2014

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.