When was ivory banned

Preventing runaway climate change by mitigating emissions of super greenhouse gases — hydrofluorocarbons HFCs. This opinion originally appeared in Japanese in Asahi Shimbun on January 8th, Around 20, elephants have been killed every year in Africa, for the past decade at least, to supply the global trade in ivory.

This year marks thirty years since the ban entered into effect, on January 18, Still, why does the poaching continue? Although the international trade was banned, many countries continued to allow domestic trade in ivory. Because of this, attempts to pass off illegally imported ivory, derived from poached elephants, as having been obtained in a legal way domestically have prevailed.

Consequently, poaching problems have never gone away. Then CITES Parties adopted a resolution calling for countries with domestic ivory markets linked to poaching or illegal trade to urgently close them.

Much of this ivory came from the , African elephants that were poached from to That's approximately 96 elephants killed per day or 1 every 15 minutes. How will stopping the sale of legal ivory help save elephants? Legal domestic ivory markets are an enforcement challenge and often serve to provide cover for the laundering of ivory from illegally killed elephants in Africa. Currently only a small percentage of illegal ivory and other wildlife products is confiscated at our borders.

Once illegal ivory is within the U. As long as demand for ivory remains high and enforcement capacity is low, the legal trade will continue to serve as a front for the black market and criminal syndicates will continue to drive elephant poaching across Africa. The new U. It essentially prohibits all commercial import, export, and interstate trade of African elephant ivory with some narrow exceptions.

Those exceptions include commercial export and interstate trade of items that meet the Endangered Species Act's antique exemption criteria, and interstate trade of certain manufactured or handcrafted items that contain a small de minimis amount of legally imported ivory. The final rule went into effect on July 6, For more information on the U. But ivory trade is not the only threat to elephants. At a time when the world is facing up to the very real and tangible threat of climate change, elephants are far more than the sum of their tusks.

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