Tag Archives: wild animals

The Ivory Bill passes the Lords

By Baroness Cathy Bakewell | Thu 22nd November 2018 - 1:21 pm

On Tuesday 13th November the Government’s Ivory Bill had its third reading in the Lords and passed through to receive Royal Assent. This was a landmark piece of legislation to go some way towards protecting elephants, especially the African elephant, who are poached for their ivory. Currently approximately 20,000 elephants a year are still being slaughtered for their ivory. This unsustainable rate equates to one every 25 minutes. We have now reached the stage where more elephants are being killed by poachers, than live elephant calves are being born every year.

The aim of the Bill was to take most of the value out of trading in ivory and so make ivory objects worthless. All import and export of ivory, whether raw or in objects, is banned with four exceptions: –

Pre-1918 items of outstanding artistic value and pre-1918 portrait miniatures with a surface area of less than 320 square centimetres;
Pre-1975 musical instruments where the ivory is less than 20% of the total volume of the instrument;
Pre-1947 items with low ivory content with less than 10% ivory of the total volume; and
Acquisitions between qualifying museums

All items which qualify as exceptions must now be registered and have a licensed certificate which accompanies that item throughout its future ownership. There are heavy fines and the possibility of imprisonment for anyone found to be illegally trading in ivory.

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged ivory bill and wildlife | 2 Comments

The Independent View: Banning wild animals in circuses – a popular law whose time has come

By Jan Creamer | Mon 13th October 2014 - 3:55 pm

There was a time when the UK led the world on animal welfare issues. We were one of the first to ban the use of animals in cosmetic product and tobacco tests, and end fur farming. Sadly though, we have lost our global leadership on other animal issues, most spectacularly on animal circuses. A total of 27 countries have now introduced measures prohibiting such acts, leaving the UK lagging way behind.