Today’s announcement constitutes the final pieces of its promised near-ban on the U.S. African elephant ivory trade, which NRDC has been pushing for through ads and other means. On Thursday, the Obama administration announced new regulations on ivory trade, basically banning the practice altogether. The Service will provide additional implementation guidance on the rule before it goes into effect July 6, 2016, 30 days following publication in the Federal Register.
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The spike in elephant slaughter reverses years of conservation efforts after the initial ban on worldwide commercial ivory trade in 1989. Antiques are also exempt from the act’s prohibitions. The rule is the latest of several actions implemented by the Service aimed at reducing the opportunities for wildlife traffickers to trade illegal ivory under the guise of a legal product.
There may always be an underground market for poached ivory, but if we can chip away at the demand enough to allow the elephant populations to recover, we might not see these creatures extinct in our lifetime-currently a very real threat.
“We believe this rule strikes an appropriate balance of allowing certain narrow exceptions for activities that do not contribute to elephant poaching and illegal trade in ivory while also achieving our primary goal of ensuring that the USA market is not contributing to the current poaching crisis”, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a brief on its website.
The African elephant ivory ban would severely limit the trade of products containing ivory – even if the ivory was obtained legally – in the United States, with a few exceptions for musicians and gun owners. Wildlife trafficking has contributed to almost 50 percent of the entire African lion population being decimated over the past three decades and approximately 100,000 elephants killed for their ivory in a recent three-year period – an average of approximately one every 15 minutes. The rule also allows exceptions for antiques more than 100 years old. In 2013, the president issued an executive order on combating wildlife trafficking.
Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe says that once illegal ivory enters the market, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish from the legal ivory used in knife handles, furniture and other products.
“The USA is boldly saying to ivory poachers: You are officially out of business”, WCS president and chief executive Cristian Samper – a member of an Obama task force on wildlife trafficking – said in a statement.
“The moment we started these conversations about closing markets, the price of ivory was cut in half, and that was confirmed by the State Department at a dinner I just had with one of their senior leaders this week”, Calvelli said.
The US is the second-largest market for poached ivory in the world, and although new, poached ivory has been banned for decades, the legal trade of antique ivory has served as a cover-up for poached items.
Under Thursday’s final rule, the import of sport-hunted trophies is limited to two per year.
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Ashe said that hunting can bring an economic value to elephants.
