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Originally Posted by Shakethetrees
Remember, the objective here is to eliminate ivory or rhino horn from private possession, and possibly possession or display in most museums. If these substances and the objects made from them are entirely removed from the conscienceless of the public worldwide, only then can the elephant and rhinoceros be saved from poaching.
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I think we are slipping into hyperbole again. The objective of these new laws is to stop the poaching (and therefore the extinction) of elephants (100,000 elephants were poached for ivory in just the last 3 years). I have seen absolutely no evidence that there is ANY intention to remove ivory objects from museum display and it would be very difficult for authorities it find and confiscate these items in our personal collections. What these laws are devised to do is to stop the TRADE. What i see as the problem with these new laws (THE big problem for us and the only one relevant to our discussions here) is how they are handing
antique ivory items. For
new ivory objects the party is over and i must state that i have absolutely no problem with that at all. Barry bemoaned the fate of current ivory artists, but i believe he was incorrect that their art
form was being brought to an end. That
FORM is sculpture and it will continue throughout our existence. These artists will simply need to change their medium. As for antiques, THAT is where our problems lie. The reason i believe that these new laws are encompassing antique ivory is because so much new ivory is artificially aged to look antique and the authorities can't be bothered to train their people to tell the difference (though i cannot fathom why some of these new restrictions include fossilized tusks, since there is no way to fake that). But as Spiral has pointed out, testing for radioactive isotope can accurately date ivory to the 1947 timeline. What i don't know is how expensive this test actually is to conduct. But it seems that if we (as in ALL antique collectors) can find a way to petition the authorities to consider this form of testing for ivory items we might stand some chance of adjusting the laws to suit antique collectors.