Barack Obama tightens restriction
on sale of elephant ivory within the US to clamp down on illegal trade
Thursday 2 June
201617.15 BSTLast modified on Thursday 2 June 201621.48 BST
Barack Obama imposed
a near total ban on the commercial trade in elephant ivory on Thursday in an
effort to choke off smuggling networks and end the slaughter of African
wildlife.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service
rules ban the sale of elephant ivory across state lines, and deepen
restrictions on international ivory sales.
Under the new rules, only antique
items more than 100 years old – such as a figurines or chess pieces – or
objects containing relatively small amounts of ivory, such as pianos and other
musical instruments, will be legal for sale.
The rules – which received
personal attention from President Obama, and Hillary Clinton, when she was
secretary of state – were the strongest action to date to cut off the
trafficking of ivory which has devastated
the African elephant population.
The US is the second destination
for illegal ivory, after China.
US officials will visit Beijing
next week for talks with Chinese officials aimed at further choking off the
global ivory trade. But Peter Knights, the chief executive of WildAid, said
ivory prices in Asia were already dropping, in response to the ban. He said he
hoped Japan would move soon to cut off the illegal trade.
An estimated 96 African elephants
are killed every day for ivory, sold across Asia and the Americas.
Obama first
confronted wildlife trafficking in 2013, with an executive order
funding training for African police forces and park rangers outgunned by armed
trafficking gangs who were slaughtering elephants and rhinos for their body
parts.
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