"Illegal ivory" refers to ivory that has been obtained and traded unlawfully. Ivory comes from the tusks of elephants, and it is illegal to hunt or trade elephants for their tusks in most countries. However, there is still a black market where elephants are killed for their tusks, and this trade is considered illegal. So,
"illegal ivory" refers to ivory that has been obtained through these illegal activities.
Full definition
The ban is not legally binding, but shows that countries are stepping up toward combating
illegal ivory trade.
Once illegal ivory has entered into the legal trade, it is difficult or impossible for enforcement officers to know what is legal and what is not.
The proposed rule to the African elephant rule under section 4 (d) of the Endangered Species Act will clamp down on the trade
in illegal ivory trinkets by banning most interstate commerce and further restricting commercial exports, with some exceptions including for defined antiques and certain manufactured items containing de minimis quantities of ivory.
Dave is a founder of and former Executive Director of EIA UK who undertook extensive undercover investigations
into illegal ivory trade and the criminal syndicates behind them in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Dubai - United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Advocacy groups such as WildAid have, however, shown that traders often use loopholes within Hong Kong's laws to re-stock their «legal» ivory stockpiles with
illegal ivory from recently poached elephants.
All legal ivory markets encourage poaching and ivory trafficking, but there is no doubt that Japan in particular is a large market with a serious problem
with illegal ivory trade,» Thornton said.
The primitive Waliangulu tribe of 250 to 300 people had been badly exploited
by illegal ivory agents in Mombasa, who paid them a pittance to poach the elephants.
Even though other countries are clamping down
on illegal ivory, the unconstrained trade in Japan may offer loopholes for criminals to keep selling ivory — fuelling elephant poaching
Great news for whales, but Rakuten is still carrying ads for elephant ivory products, many originating from
illegal ivory poached in Afrtica.
EIA strives to
eliminate illegal ivory trade and increase enforcement to protect elephants, both domestically and in range and consuming countries.
On June 19th, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crushed a ton of
seized illegal ivory in New York's Times Square, and last week top officials from the United States and China focused on combating wildlife trafficking at the annual Strategic & Economic Dialogue.
«Africa's elephants are paying for Japan's shocking failure to enact its legal commitments to enforce rigorous controls to
prevent illegal ivory trade,» said Allan Thornton, President of EIA.
At 10; 30 a.m., the state DEC destroys nearly two tons of
illegal ivory confiscated through state enforcement efforts in Central Park, to send «a clear message that the state will not tolerate wildlife crime that threatens to wipe out Africa's elephants,» Manhattan.
The DEC is planning a public crushing of
illegal ivory tusks, trinkets, statues, jewelry and other decorative items it has confiscated over the years in Central Park on Aug. 3 at 10:30 a.m.
Law enforcement agencies and conservationist are expected to make use of the system — developed by researchers from the University's Centre for Cyber Security — in their ongoing battle
against illegal ivory sales.
Usually when
illegal ivory shipments are intercepted, law enforcers can only target the smuggler and the importers who bring the goods to market overseas.
EIA considers such a campaign tantamount to enacting a large - scale
illegal ivory amnesty that will only serve to promote more ivory trade, counter to international efforts to close markets to protect elephants.
Earlier, EIA's ground - breaking undercover investigations over two years into
illegal ivory flowing from the killing fields of Africa to the smart shops of Hong Kong had provided the key evidence that helped secure the international ivory ban, passed in 1989 by a three - quarters majority of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
It's time for Japan to ban domestic ivory trade starting with banning internet trade in ivory, therefore ending the sale of ivory hanko name seals, and ending with any further government registration of whole raw tusks — a huge loophole that
allows illegal ivory to be legalized and laundered onto the Japanese domestic market.
This surge was directly correlated to a more than quadrupling of local black - market ivory prices paid to poachers and tripling in the volume and number of
illegal ivory seizures through Kenyan ports of transit.
We congratulate China's government for showing the world that elephant poaching and
illegal ivory consumption is unacceptable.
The EIA said between 2005 and 2010,
illegal ivory accounted for up to 87 percent of ivory hankos produced in Japan.
The flourishing domestic ivory markets of Japan and China are now the key driving force behind Africa's poaching epidemic and
global illegal ivory trade.»
Radiocarbon measurements have a range of uses, from analysing archaeological finds, to detecting fraudulent works of art, to
identifying illegal ivory trading, to assessing the regeneration of brain cells in neurological patients.
He made the comment in announcing guilty pleas from two dealers and their businesses caught in New York City with upwards of a ton of
illegal ivory goods with a retail value estimated at $ 2 million.
Esmond must have been thrilled — and could certainly have viewed as a personal and professional victory — when the Chinese government news agency began to publicly call out Japan - the world's second largest consumer of ivory for taking no action against its own
flourishing illegal ivory trade.
This is the case in the U.S. ivory market — one of the largest in the world — where traffickers exploit regulatory loopholes in order to
misrepresent illegal ivory as legal ivory.
TOKYO — Japan's ivory tusk registration system is awash with fraud,
fueling illegal ivory trade and undermining international action to protect Africa's disappearing elephants under pressure from intense ivory poaching.
Born out of the necessity of establishing a U.S. presence from its London sister - office, EIA US began as co-founders Allan Thornton and David Currey
uncovered illegal ivory trade flows from Africa through the Middle East to supply markets in Asia.
EIA first reported in 2015 that Japan's tusk registration scheme was rife with fraudulent declarations that allowed
undocumented illegal ivory tusks to be legalized for sale onto Japan's domestic market.
China's long failure to crack down on its
massive illegal ivory trade makes a mockery of its claims to be hosting a «Green Olympics».
Even before the ban has officially begun, confiscation of
illegal ivory flooding into the country has dropped by 80 percent in 2016, and poaching has declined in Kenya, Knights says.
Environmentalists say that this situation is being exploited by criminals to
launder illegal ivory from Africa, and have been calling for Thailand to ban the sale of all of it.
Great news for whales, but Rakuten is still carrying ads for elephant ivory products, many originating from
illegal ivory poached in...
Last Friday, the Unites States destroyed more than one ton of
seized illegal ivory in the middle of Times Square, New York — the second time in two years that ivory has been crushed in the Unites States...
Rigorously applied, the registration system is intended to
prevent illegal ivory from entering Japan's market.
The Parties have made it quite clear that there should be no trade in elephant ivory... any legal trade in elephant ivory incentivizes elephant poaching and
illegal ivory sales.
Millions of dollars of ivory was destroyed in Central Park on Thursday as the state fights for elephants and
against illegal ivory trade.
The campaign is purportedly intended to gauge the size of the national stockpile, but the tusk registration regulations are weak and full of loopholes making it impossible to prevent
illegal ivory from being registered.
Forest elephants throughout the greater Congo Basin have been decimated in recent years by organized poachers supplying the booming Asian market
with illegal ivory; according to a study published this year in the journal PLoS One, their numbers plunged by 62 percent between 2002 and 2011, to about 100,000.
Dave is a founder of and former Executive Director of EIA UK who undertook extensive undercover investigations
into illegal ivory trade and the criminal syndicates...
Phrases with «illegal ivory»