{"id":12484,"date":"2014-02-12T03:41:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T03:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/us-bans-commercial-ivory-trade\/"},"modified":"2014-02-12T03:40:14","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T03:40:14","slug":"us-bans-commercial-ivory-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/us-bans-commercial-ivory-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"US Bans Commercial Ivory Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

{{The United States clamped down on the domestic trade of elephant ivory Tuesday as part of a new drive to help African countries stem the threat to wildlife from poachers.}}<\/p>\n

The White House administrative action bans all commercial imports of African elephant ivory, including antiques, as well as all commercial exports — except for bona fide antiques and certain other items.<\/p>\n

The outlawed ivory trade is mostly fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East, where elephant tusks and rhino horns are used in traditional medicine and to make ornaments.<\/p>\n

Poaching has risen sharply in Africa in recent years where, besides targeting rhinos, gangs eyeing lucrative international markets have slaughtered whole herds of elephants for their tusks.<\/p>\n

“This ban is the best way to help ensure that US markets do not contribute to the further decline of African elephants in the wild,” the White House said in a statement.<\/p>\n

It said federal departments and agencies would immediately take actions to, among other things, clarify what constitutes an antique.<\/p>\n

“To qualify as an antique, an item must be more than 100 years old and meet other requirements under the Endangered Species Act.”<\/p>\n

“The onus will now fall on the importer, exporter, or seller to demonstrate that an item meets these criteria.”<\/p>\n

Other measures include limiting to two the number of African elephant sport-hunted trophies that can be imported by an individual each year.<\/p>\n

The crackdown on ivory is a key aspect of a new national strategy for combating wildlife trafficking, also unveiled Tuesday, that has been in the works for some time.<\/p>\n

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{{The United States clamped down on the domestic trade of elephant ivory Tuesday as part of a new drive to help African countries stem the threat to wildlife from poachers.}} The White House administrative action bans all commercial imports of African elephant ivory, including antiques, as well as all commercial exports — except for bona […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000050297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[159],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-12484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-publisher"],"bylines":[{"id":159,"name":"Publisher","slug":"publisher","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":2}],"contributors":[{"id":159,"name":"Publisher","slug":"publisher","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":2}],"featured_image":{"id":2000050297,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton12484.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000050297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12484"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=12484"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=12484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}