Ivory crushed to protest illegal trade
New York group wants attention on elephants
NEW YORK — Trinkets, statues and jewelry crafted from the tusks of at least 100 slaughtered elephants were fed Thursday into a rock crusher in Central
Park to demonstrate the state’s commitment to smashing the illegal ivory trade.
The artifacts placed ceremoniously onto a conveyor belt to be ground into dust included piles of golf-ball-sized Japanese sculptures, called netsuke, intricately carved into monkeys, rabbits and other fanciful designs. Many of the items were beautiful. Some were extremely valuable.
But state environmental officials and Wildlife Conservation Society members, who partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the “Ivory Crush” of nearly 2 tons of ivory, said no price justifies slaughtering elephants for their tusks.
“By crushing a ton of ivory in the middle of the world’s most famous public park, New Yorkers are sending a message to poachers, traffickers and dealers who try to set up shop right here on our streets,” said John Calvelli, the Society’s executive vice president and director of the 96 Elephants Campaign. “We won’t stand for the slaughter of elephants. Nobody needs an ivory brooch that badly.”
The sale of ivory across international boundaries has been banned since 1990, but the U.S. and many other countries have allowed people to buy and sell ivory domestically, subject to certain regulations that gave smugglers loopholes. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service instituted a near-total ban on the domestic commercial ivory trade and barred sales across state lines.
Since August 2014, New York law has prohibited the sale, purchase, trade or distribution of anything made from elephant or mammoth ivory or rhinoceros horn, except in limited situations with state approval.
The ivory pieces sent to the crusher included more than
$4.5 million worth seized by undercover investigators from Metropolitan Fine Arts & Antiques in New York City in 2015. In pleading guilty last week to illegally selling ivory, the store’s owners agreed to donate $100,000 each to the World Wildlife Fund and Wild Tomorrow Fund for their endangered species protection projects.