The UK government has confess to order a ban on nearly all ivory , to aid put a stop to elephants being poached in Africa .
The last major consensus carried out , and the first ever pan - African one , revealed a worrying descent in elephant populations : a huge 30 per centum drop between 2007 and 2014 . concord to theWWF : “ Around 20,000 African elephants are kill every class for their bone tusk , and evidence has revealed that the UK ’s legal bone market has been used as a covering for barter in illegal ivory . ”
The UK is currently thelargest exporters of legal ivoryin the cosmos , more than three times bigger than the US , and it primarily pass to Asia .
Currently , the UK does have a prohibition on the trade of bone for any that is produced after 1947 . This new consultation is to include in the ban any off-white that has been owned and worked on before 1947 , because all this rule had leave in was tusk being cosmetically age to face like it was antique , to get through barriers . There will be some items that are nontaxable , however , such as melodious instruments and items of cultural importance .
This is , In fact , quite a fleck of a backtrack for the UK government as despite this proposal being included in the 2015 button-down pronunciamento , it had disappeared from the 2017 translation that came out around the time of the general election in June .
" Ivory should never be seen as a commodity for financial gain or a status symbol - so we want to blackball its sale , ” Environment Secretary Michael Govesaidtoday . " These plans will put the UK front and centre of global efforts to end the subtle trade in ivory . "
The complete ban on ivory is slowly making clearance . Last twelvemonth , the Convention International Trade In Endangered Species ( CITES ) convention agreed to make the external baninclude domestic patronage , a step China astonishingly match with , declare it would banish its own tusk tradeby the end of 2017 .
insistency from influential figures that admit Prince William , Stephen Hawking , Jane Goodall , the WWF and the Stop Ivory mathematical group go some way towards the government ’s conclusion to put the proscription back on the table .
“ Along with our partners , we congratulate the regime on this important step and look forward to puzzle out with it to ensure the ban is follow out robustly and without time lag , ” John Stephenson from Stop Ivory toldthe Guardian .
Tanya Steel , WWF head executive director , said that this step was about “ a circumstances more than banning off-white sales in one country … we need to be the generation that ends the illegal ivory deal once and for all . "
