Good News

[Content Note: Animal endangerment.]

President Obama has announced "sweeping bans to the United States' ivory trade in the hopes of protecting the increasingly endangered African elephant."

Created in response to what the Fish and Wildlife Service called "the alarming rise in poaching of the [African elephant] to fuel the growing illegal trade in ivory," the new proposed measures ban the sale of ivory across state lines — with specific, limited exceptions for certain pre-existing items like musical instruments or furniture — and further restrict commercial exports. Prior to Saturday's announcement, ivory regulations in the United States have mostly targeted commercial import and export of the material. Legal ivory — found in various antique items or imported to the United States before 1990 and obtained before 1978 — has been allowed to be sold across state lines.

"By tightening domestic controls on trade in elephant ivory and allowing only very narrow exceptions, we will close existing avenues that are exploited by traffickers and address ivory trade that poses a threat to elephants in the wild," FWS Director Dan Ashe said in a press statement. "Federal law enforcement agents will have clearer lines by which to demarcate legal from illegal trade."

Poaching for ivory is one of the main threats that African elephants face. According to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012. In 2011 — the peak year for elephant deaths, according to the study — one out of every 12 African elephants was killed by a poacher, amounting to nearly three deaths every hour.

...The United States represents the second-largest market for ivory in the world, behind Asia. In 2012, the most recent year for which the FWS has complete data, some 1,000 items containing elephant ivory were seized at U.S. ports.

..."The United States is among the world's largest consumers of wildlife, both legal and illegal," Ashe said. "We want to ensure our nation is not contributing to the scourge of poaching that is decimating elephant populations across Africa."

Naturally, this isn't going to completely halt poaching nor is going to completely halt black market ivory sales, but we've got to do what we can in order to put a dent in both. With elephants being killed at a rate of about 35,000 annually, extinction is not just a possibility but a certainty, if we don't do something.

And we must. We must have elephants. Because everything is better with elephants.