Tusk force
Has bureaucracy gone mad in its well-meaning attempts to stop the illegal trade of endangered animals?
Has bureaucracy gone mad in its wellmeaning attempts to stop the illegal trade in endangered animals?
It is an ornate piece. A painted, carved and inlaid Pompeiian cabinet made in 1862 for the Great Exhibition in London by internationally renowned cabinetmaker Johann Levien, darling of Europe’s nobility. It is rare. Furniture historian William Cottrell reckons there are only 10-12 known pieces by Levien left in the world.
It is valuable. In 1998, a Levien sideboard sold for £380,000.
It has a New Zealand connection. In the early 1840s, Levien based himself in Wellington, where he developed a passion for native timbers and an aptitude for te reo.
And it is at the heart of a public row that could see it given away or the inlaid figurines by master craftsman Ferdinando Pogliani removed, gifted or destroyed.
Because they are made of ivory; because the cabinet arrived here without the required documentation; and because when the permit did arrive, we were in lockdown.
“It is insanity,” fumes Cottrell. “If [the figurines] are destroyed, is the world a better place? No. No Zimbabwean poacher will ever hear about it. No corrupt Customs official in Mombasa will ever know about it and no Chinese businessman keen on rhino horn and illegal elephant tusk will ever know about it.”
Department of Conservation (DoC) national compliance manager Marta Lang is adamant. “Once upon a time, an elephant was killed to put ivory on that cabinet, and that cabinet is worth a lot of money because it is old and it has ivory on it. The status and value of that ivory is fuelling the poaching.”
The cabinet’s owner, Te Anau-based Patrick Soanes, is bewildered. “It comes down to one piece of paperwork, and you have vandalised a piece of art that is world famous.”
The axe hanging over Levien’s cabinet is one of several such impasses exposing a legal framework that sweeps up antiquities in a broadbrush attempt to stop the poaching of elephants through a largely paperwork-based process of import and export certification.
Two years ago, Soanes, a relatively new collector of antique furniture, was asked by a UK dealer if he would be interested in an item made by a celebrated cabinetmaker with known links to New Zealand. He would.
Soanes applied for certification through the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), which is responsible for enforcing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in the UK. Even though the ivory figurines were made long before elephants were added to the Cites list, he knew a pre-convention certificate was still required. He also had the age of the cabinet verified to comply with the NZ Trade in Endangered Species Act.
In late 2019, UK shipping agent Robinsons Relocation scanned and emailed the necessary documentation to its New Zealand counterpart, Conroy Removals. Conroy noted the certificate didn’t have the required stamp from the UK Border Force. It contacted Robinsons, but by this time the cabinet was en route without the required
“It comes down to one piece of paperwork, and you have vandalised a piece of art that is world famous.”
paperwork (as with an international traveller with a passport, Cites imports have to be accompanied by physical documentation).
Robinsons promptly sent off the permit, but this was done via Royal Mail instead of international courier, and to a street address rather than a PO Box number.
“Because this was during lockdown, there was no one to receive it,” says Conroy general manager Fiona Conroy. “So, it was sent back to the UK. There has been no deceit. Everyone has been open and honest. It has just been a pile of errors.”
Error or not, when the cabinet arrived on March 20, last year without any accompanying documentation, it was seized by DoC, the Cites management authority.
APHA would not endorse the item retrospectively – after all, it had already issued a permit. By this time, that permit had expired, but a replacement could be issued only if the original was lost or stolen. And repatriation? No. The offending item was now considered to have been illegally exported.
DoC laid out the options: removal and disposal of the ivory inlays or “complete disposal of the entire cabinet”.
Horrified, Soanes appealed to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman found DoC had “not acted unreasonably”. New Zealand’s relevant legislation, the Trade in Endangered Species Act, gives DoC’s director-general some discretion in deciding how to “dispose” of a specimen, but returning that item to the importer “is not the type of ‘disposal’ the section envisages”.
Neither Soanes nor Cottrell doubts the importance of Cites, established in 1973 to protect endangered plants and animals. Both describe their contempt for a poaching practice that, according to the World Wildlife Crime Report, killed 10,000-17,000 African elephants each year between 2006 and 2018. But the ivory market is largely driven by demand for new trinkets: Buddhas, elephants and the like. Most ivory entering this country is “pre-convention” household items made before elephants were added to the Cites list, such as mahjong sets, chess pieces and pianos. The global trade in antique ivory can provide a mask for artefacts made from illegally sourced ivory, but even wildlife trade-monitoring network Traffic says the destruction of antique ivory has “little to no impact on current illicit trade flows or poaching”.
In the meantime, says Cottrell, the catchall law scoops up everything in its wake.
In 2018, sports physiologist Jon Ackland was in Australia to sort out his deceased father’s belongings. They included two sperm-whale teeth or tabua, gifted to his father and grandfather by, or in the presence of, highranking Fijian chiefs.
These were rare honours, sourced from whales that had died of natural causes.
In sending them back home, he ticked the Customs box declaring items made from “wildlife (endangered species)”, but he didn’t know he needed a pre-convention certificate.
Back in Auckland, he got an email saying the tabua had been seized and that they had to be sent back to Fiji. For Ackland, this is akin to returning a Victoria Cross, an insult to the benefactor and a loss to the family.
“They have been carefully held in my family for three generations. They are not tourist trinkets or trophies; no endangered species were trafficked, hunted or killed.”
DoC’s website says, although it is unlikely a country of export will provide a retrospective Cites permit, they can be issued and accepted “under special circumstances”. But, says Lang, “retrospective permits can’t currently be accepted under our Act.”
“There is no way back,” says Ackland. “There have been no conversations.”
DoC laid out the options: removal and disposal of the ivory inlays or “complete disposal of the entire cabinet”.
In 2017, Julian Paton was recruited from Bristol to head a new heart-research centre at the University of Auckland. Among his family’s belongings was an 1895 Jarrett & Goudge piano, a family heirloom passed down from his great-aunt and now played by his wife and daughter. He asked his shipping agent what paperwork was required to account for the ivory keys. He was told to have the age verified, which he duly did.
Six weeks after they arrived, Paton got a call saying he had illegally imported ivory. “We demonstrated our intention to do everything correctly. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t fill out the paperwork retrospectively.” He could not send the piano back, “because they would then be importing an illegal good”, and the UK would not issue a retrospective permit. He could gift it to a charity or approved institution, but his wife and children loved playing it.
Eventually, he agreed to have the thin ivory veneers removed and replaced with a synthetic alternative. Now, he says, “the piano looks like a film star from California when they smile, a horrible glossy grin not in keeping with the piano”.
The stripping of the ivories hit the headlines. In a blog, entitled “We don’t play fast and loose with the law”, DoC directorgeneral Lou Sanson said of course the ivory was old and not actively contributing to the ivory trade, “that’s why there wouldn’t have been an issue with its import into New Zealand had the process laid out by international law been followed”. But DoC could not make an exception “which could undermine its ability to uphold international obligations”.
COMPLETELY INFLEXIBLE
Earlier this year, retired music teacher Simon Rook and his wife, Kiwi Heather Horne, decided to sell their home in Canada and move to Hawke’s Bay. They arranged for their household items to be shipped, including a 120-year-old C Bechstein piano inherited from his mother. Knowing the keys were ivory, he applied for the required certification. But this is the age of Covid. Global shipping is in disarray. Twice the ship’s departure was postponed. Four months later, the piano still sits in a warehouse in Vancouver. It is now expected to reach here on October 5, just two days before the permit expires. If it arrives with an out-of-date permit, DoC says it will be impounded.
“Our agent has contacted DoC to see if they will be a little bit accommodating, but they seem to be completely inflexible,” Rook says.
Last month, DoC laid out the options for Soanes’ cabinet. It could be kept by the Crown for scientific or educational purposes, but DoC already has several ivory specimens and storage of the entire cabinet, it says, “would be impractical”.
DoC could destroy it, which is its “leastpreferred option”. But Soanes is adamant it is not DoC’s to destroy. It owns the impounded ivory, he says, not the cabinet in which it sits.
DoC could gift the item to an approved institution, but even if a museum was willing to take it (Te Papa already has two Levien pieces, both containing native timber, which this one does not), Soanes would be left some $30,000 out of pocket. And where is the logic, asks Cottrell, of DoC saying something can be donated to a museum? “That suggests it was okay all along, but as a private individual, you are not allowed to have it.”
It could remove the figurines and either destroy them or, potentially, gift them to a museum. But this, says Cottrell, would compromise the maker’s intent, “which goes right to the heart of what is art is”. Ironically, even if they were removed, there is nothing to stop a furniture restorer buying secondhand ivory – available at any auction house – and replicating the scrimshaw.
No one seems to come out of this well. Soanes is embarrassed, Cottrell is fuming and New Zealand could be seen to be taking a scalpel to a rare piece of cabinetry. Says Cottrell, “The cabinet was fine for 160 years, but when it moved location, it became contaminated. Nothing else changed.” l