Warning! Mammoth & Mastodon ivory illegal to sell in CA on 7/1
Because of the poaching of African Elephants, many countries have banned the import of modern Ivory. Smugglers have been marking shipments of modern ivory as fossil ivory to get it past customs. Here in the United States, beginning with New Jersey and New York, state legislators have been submitting bills to ban the sale of all ivory, modern and fossil.
While the differences between extant elephant ivory and fossil Mammoth ivory have been recognized for some time, and a good example and description can be found on the Fish and Wildlife Service page; www.fws.gov/lab/ivory_natural.php, State legislatures have simply decided to go the less expensive route and ban all ivory. This should be addressed in each state that bans fossil ivory.
The California Ivory ban goes into effect on July 1st, and it will be illegal to sell any fossil ivory in the state after that date. The legislation's definition; "Ivory" means a tooth or tusk from a species of elephant, hippopotamus, mammoth, mastodon, walrus, warthog, whale, or narwhal, or a piece thereof, whether raw ivory or worked ivory, and includes a product containing, or advertised as containing, ivory. You will risk confiscation of your fossil ivory and very stiff fines and other penalties for having any of the legally collected material available during the shows or for sale in your business.
This can affect the sale of every bow for sale from July 1, 2016, onward.
Replies (10)
A bit of a dumb-lazy move by mere politicians, wanting to make cuts and evidently pandering to a few. Wish all of this could be overturned.
Feel bad for all the companies and individuals providing us with great products with mammoth ivory pieces, as it's just unfair and abusive towards them. Work harder, rather than punishing everybody else, would be my advice to these "law" makers.
I love elephants, BTW. This has nothing to do with that issue.
I have a 1784 Square Piano from London with Ivory keys, am I supposed to burn it??
I'm sure there will be complicated 'exceptions' and 'grandfathering' clauses, but yeah we're all probably gonna have to be looking into getting passports and documentation for our bows that don't have plastic tips, antique pianos, all that stuff. :P
Lyndon, you'll have to move to Canada, quick! No ivory laws here, yet.
Small exemptions will allow people to continue to sell any object more than 100 years old if it contains only 5 percent ivory by volume, and musical instruments such as pianos and violin bows if they contain less than 20 percent ivory and were built before 1975.
In Washington, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has funded a similar measure on the November ballot, Initiative 1401, to ban the purchase and sale of nearly all products from elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, sea turtles and sharks.
I still don't quite understand why it is illegal in many jurisdictions to harvest ivory from an elephant that has died of natural causes in the wild or in captivity (in which latter case there should be no doubt about the cause of death).
I do understand that hunting and killing elephants purely for the sake of their ivory is very wrong and can never be approved.
Because if there was any legal Ivory, there would be no way to tell the difference between legally harvested Ivory and illegally harvested Ivory.
That's a bit of a stretch. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that some governmental agencies consider it to be too much bother to learn to tell the difference between elephant ivory, and mastodon and mammoth ivory.
I disagree, your tacit support for a legal form of Ivory trade is a bit of a stretch though IMHO
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May 14, 2016 at 11:39 PM · This can affect your ability to buy or sell a bow (or a complete violin package containing a bow).