Michael Mosbacher

Britain’s ivory ban is needlessly draconian

An ebony box covered with ivory panels, c. 1800 to 1825 (photo: V&A)

The world’s most draconian ban on the trade in ivory came into force in the UK this month. It does not increase the legal protections already enjoyed by all living elephants, but rather extends these protections to elephants that have been dead for decades.

Trade in ivory and most ivory products from elephants killed after 1947 was already illegal; now all trade in ivory except that covered by five narrow exemptions is banned and subject to a maximum penalty of a £250,000 fine or five years’ imprisonment­­ – even if the tusks were last attached to a living elephant centuries ago. The supporters of the ban argue that it stops rogue dealers passing off more recent ivory as antique items – but such behaviour already was illegal and subject to substantial criminal sanction.

England has had a long association with ivory; it was a renowned centre for ivory carving in the Middle Ages. Some of the British Museum’s ivory pieces date to the 12th century; the houses of the Victorian and Edward British middle classes were rammed with ivory in the shape of everything from hairbrushes, combs and vanity boxes via Japanese netsuke and Oriental carvings to billiard balls, hunting trophies and pianos. Whilst pianos will certainly be exempt from the ban and mediaeval carvings – unless they are distinctly lacklustre iterations – will almost certainly be, selling what were once ubiquitous artefacts furnishing bourgeois homes is now a crime with potential penalties not dissimilar to those for trading Class B drugs. The difference is that there is plenty of support for decriminalising cannabis. The same cannot be said for countenancing an overturn of the ivory ban. The most banal and bourgeois ivory trinket is now more subversive than the herbal stimulants whose unpoliced stench has become one of central London’s most ubiquitous smells.

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