Defra consultation on proposals
received more than 70,000 responses, 88% in favour
Tue 3 Apr
2018 00.01 BST
A UK ban on ivory sales, which
the government claims will be the toughest in Europe and one of the strictest
in the world, is to be introduced after the proposals were overwhelmingly backed
in a public consultation.
The ban makes exemptions only for
musical instruments containing a small percentage of ivory, some antiques, and
museum objects.
The environment secretary,
Michael Gove, described the trade in ivory as “abhorrent” and said: “Ivory
should never be seen as a commodity for financial gain or a status symbol, so
we will introduce one of the world’s toughest bans on ivory sales to protect
elephants for future generations.”
No date has yet been set for the
introduction of the legislation. A spokeswoman for the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it would be done “when
parliamentary time allows”.
A study
last summer of records under the convention on
international trade in endangered species (Cites ) suggested that between 2010
and 2015 Britain was the largest exporter of legal ivory in the world.
The number of elephants in the
wild is believed to have declined by almost a third in the past decade, and an
estimated 20,000 a year are killed to meet the global demand for ivory.
Some campaigners have been
seeking a blanket ban, but Charlie Mayhew, the chief executive of the African
wildlife charity Tusk Trust, described the exemptions as pragmatic. “The ban
will ensure there is no value for modern-day ivory and the tusks of recently
poached elephants cannot enter the UK market,” he said.
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