Wildlife Conservation News: UK ivory trade ban to help end 'shame' of elephant poaching

The UK government has bowed to campaigners and will ban the sale of ivory regardless of age, according to a new consultation.

The UK is the biggest exporter of legal ivory in the world and shutting down the trade will help prevent illegal ivory being laundered by criminals. More than 50 elephants are killed by poachers every day on average and the population of African elephants plunged by a third between 2007-14 alone, leading to warnings that the entire species could go extinct.

The international trade in ivory has been illegal since 1990 but currently the UK law allows trade in “antiques” carved before 1947, or items worked before 1990 that have government certificates. In September 2016, the then environment secretary Andrea Leadsom pledged to ban the sale of items carved before 1990, but not before 1947, although no progress was made on implementation.

The new ban, put forward on Friday by Leadsom’s successor, Michael Gove, will prohibit the sale of pre-1947 ivory. This represents a U-turn and comes as a surprise – the Conservatives removed a pledge on ivory from their 2017 general election manifesto in June that had been in the 2015 manifesto.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2hSS7PA

Source: The Guardian

 

 

 

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