By: Godfrey Harris

The effort to get the article that Dan Stiles and I wrote on the “Wrong Way to Protect Elephants” (New York Times, Op-Ed, March 27, 2014) into print felt like a career in itself. It all started in mid-January when I was told by a friend at the National Association of Music Merchants convention that a historic 1862 Steinway piano with ivory keys was trapped in Japan because of Fish and Wildlife Service obduracy. It was the kind of story the Political Action Network of the International Ivory Society had been looking for. It not only provided a human dimension to the hardships of the proposed new rules to ban the trade and movement of ivory, but it dealt with an instrument that gave the rural Midwest its cultural base and clearly illustrated why ivory has a practical as well as artistic importance in history.

I called the source of the news in Oakland, took down the pertinent facts, invited Dan Stiles, one of the most knowledgeable people involved in the ivory trade, to join me, and started searching for a lead for the story. Once I could tie the fifth upright ever made by Steinway to the introduction of Taps as a Civil War bugle call, I had the connection I wanted. I asked my editor to review the finished document before he sent it off on our behalf to The New York Times. I said if the Times were to pass on the article, then he was to submit it to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the San Francisco Chronicle in that order. The final draft went out on February 4 and 10 days later, we got a Valentine bouquet: The New York Times said that they would publish the article.

But nothing happened. Other major news events seemed to erupt and preempt the space available for the Steinway story — the severe winter weather in the East and the drought in the West, the demonstrations and Russian activity in Ukraine, the Academy Awards, the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and on and on. All understandable, yet it still looked like the Times had spiked our piece with no intention of publishing it as a way to keep the article out of rival papers. We asked again in early March about the chances of publication; the Times guy said that week for sure. But again nothing happened. The next week I had a flash: Why not suggest to the editor linking publication to the meeting of the Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking on March 20 in Washington. We got a “good idea” back from the editor, but still more nothing. Then Tom Mossberg’s article talking about the hardships the new rules would have appeared on page A-15 of the paper and Chris Conway, a Senior Editor of the Op-Ed page, said he and his people would work on the piece for publication the week of March 24. This time all hell broke loose.

I had always heard that there was a friendly rivalry between the staff of the Op-Ed page and the editorial writers. If the Times said one thing editorially, the Op-Ed folks would look for something that challenged that point of view. Since the Times had editorially endorsed the need for the new rules in late 2013, our article claiming that the new rules might actually kill more elephants than save them seemed right for publication. But that said, the Op-Ed editors wanted to get our 780 words absolutely right. They treated it as if it were a Ph.D. thesis. Their fact checker went to work. He called the guy who owned the piano in Scotland, he checked with my source in Oakland, he talked with a prominent guitar expert in Nashville who had given me the original tip. He asked for articles that would buttress our main arguments — and we found a half-dozen or so of them for him to review.

When we thought we were done, Conway came back to me and said that while we had explained what was wrong with the regulations, we hadn’t offered any new ideas to make the situation for elephants better. He wanted more and he wanted it fast. Luckily, Dan Stiles was visiting Los Angeles from his home base in Kenya. He and I crafted a few sentences that I would then dictate over the phone to Conway. He took them down on what sounded like an old manual typewriter. He was reverting to the role of a copy desk editor in an old black-and-white movie as if he were holding the bulldog edition for the latest news from the scene of a grisly murder.

In the end, however, our final sentence came too late to make the next day’s edition. Worse, Conway now had time to go back to fussing with elements of the piece to make it even better. With another writer on staff, he decided to insert the word “African” every time the word elephant appeared in the piece. I objected. I thought it sounded redundant. I was told Dan had okayed the change. So I shut up. Then in the final final draft I was Emailed, I saw this sentence: “The keys on all these (upright) instruments were all fashioned from the ivory of African elephants.” I pounced. I called the Times, but learned that Conway was in a meeting. I left a message noting that we have no proof that the ivory that Steinway used was from Africa; a lot of Asian elephant ivory was in use in the days when the piano was built. Conway called back late in the evening of March 26: He said he had the proof; his fact checker had called Steinway and their historian had confirmed they had used African ivory on the piano stuck in Japan.

Based on our experience of getting this one article into America’s newspaper of record, I can say that the paper does indeed offer “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

About the Author: Godfrey Harris directs the Political Action Network of the International Ivory Society. The above article was published in May 7, 2014 issue of the International Ivory Society newsletter.

By: Corr Mitchell LLC

The Federal Government is about to crush small businesses across the United States in the name of stopping elephant poachers in Africa. Unless regulators and law makers get up to speed about an emotional issue that could drive a knee-jerk reaction at the expense of jobs, hundreds of law abiding businesses and art collectors will be hurt by an unnecessarily heavy-handed policy.

On February 11, 2014, the White House along with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (“USFWS”) announced the National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking & Commercial Ban on Trade in Elephant Ivory. Without input from the legislative branch, the executive branch announced its plan to do everything in its power to criminalize the domestic trade of elephant ivory and any items that contain ivory. Full policy implementation would make it practically impossible to sell, refurbish, repair, embellish or otherwise transfer ownership of anything containing elephant ivory, rendering those items worthless. While talking at length about the emotionally charged topic of elephant poaching in Africa, the policy only superficially addresses the successful measures the United States already has taken or how this policy will hurt people who have never broken any laws or contributed to elephant poaching.

Unlike the current policy, the USFWS (the agency with primary responsibility for regulating ivory) issued a 2012 Fact Sheet acknowledging the effectiveness of current laws by stating they “do not believe that there is a significant illegal ivory trade into this country.” From 1989 to date, the US has made “significant seizures” of illegally imported ivory which accounts for about 30% of all reported seizures in the world. The Service said that most of that ivory was “unwittingly purchase[d] and import[ed] into the United States only to have [the ivory] confiscated at the ports.” That ivory, collected over 25 years since the 1989 ban, was recently crushed by the government for publicity to launch this most recent effort to ban domestic trade.

The same 2012 USFWS Fact Sheet also acknowledged that outside the United States, especially in Asia, there remains a brisk trade in poached elephant ivory. Without explanation, the USFWS now portrays the United States as the second largest market requiring drastic action, the hope being that killing the domestic trade of pre-ban ivory in the United States will affect demand of illegally traded ivory in China.

Painfully absent from this discussion is the impact on businesses and art collectors in the United States who have always followed the law. Unlike in China where poached elephant ivory costs $1500 per pound, in the United States pre-ban ivory is plentiful and only about $250 per pound. Before the 1989 ban, there was already a lot of ivory in the country that could be traded, whether from existing commercial stocks, excess ivory stored by museums, or ivory that came on the market in estate sales when collectors died or when recycled from other items like piano keys. This ivory has been used in products including antique restorations, musical instruments, chess sets, tool and knife handles, pistol grips, and custom pool cues or jewelry, not to mention a variety of religious and cultural items. Businesses in this industry are typically artisans who make, sell, repair, refurbish or embellish items. Because of existing export restrictions, big businesses avoid using ivory, isolating the market from areas of the world where poachers trade their ivory.

Full domestic ban implementation threatens to wipe out small businesses and render items containing ivory worthless on legal markets without affecting demand in the areas of the world that pay poachers to kill elephants for their tusks. The proposed policy threatens to impose documentation requirements on pre-ban ivory that are impossible to meet, leaving businesses with legal ivory stock and products that contain ivory that they can no longer sell and for which they have not been compensated. Families will have heirlooms that can only be stored or destroyed. People with musical instruments won’t be able to repair or refurbish them, and artisans who dedicated a lifetime to learning their craft will become obsolete if not criminal.

Instead of a heavy-handed ban that will expand the international black market, officials would be wise to tighten areas where illegal ivory could leak through the system. The problem is at the borders – if poached ivory can’t enter this market, then domestic trade of legal ivory need not be impaired. Most importantly, the government should be reaching out to the citizens who the policy will negatively affect to implement rules that do not punish innocent people. The government does not appear to have made any significant attempt to evaluate the economic impact of this ban, nor has it consulted with most affected businesses to develop less draconian means for achieving its stated goal.

The speed with which this domestic ban is being implemented has taken most businesses by surprise. The government’s confiscated ivory crush was announced in September 2013, the President established an advisory group in December, the policy was announced on February 11, and USFWS issued their first directive affecting international trade changes on February 26. USFWS intends to issue rules on domestic trade starting in April.

Businesses, art collectors and everyone concerned about the domestic ivory ban need to act now. Start by contacting Senators and Members of Congress to inform them on the issues. Because time is of the essence, phone calls are best with follow-up e-mails. Find your Member of Congress here, Senators here.

Second, spread the word among your peers and your customers. This isn’t just about poached elephants – it is about people losing their livelihoods and/or their investment in treasured items unnecessarily. The other side of this story needs to get out, and the people who are affected need to tell it.

About Corr Mitchell LLC:
Law firm of Corr Mitchell LLC is located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They specialize as general counsel to small businesses who do not employ a lawyer in-house, and back up the in-house counsel for medium and large businesses who need additional support. The above article is posted on their website.

By: Dalya Alberge

Antique dealers and museum curators have attacked a proposed US ban on American commercial trade in objects made of elephant ivory as a philistine wrecking act. They claim certain provisions in the National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking will have a drastic impact on exhibitions, scholarship and the trade in antique masterpieces, while doing nothing to stop the slaughter of an endangered species. The warning was sounded by art experts after the US government announced in February that it would no longer allow commercial imports of African ivory of any age, including antiques – which were previously exempt. Domestic and export trade will also now be limited to artefacts more than 100 years old.

In an effort to stop the massacre of thousands of elephants each year, the new rules will revoke the previous exemptions for antique ivory. But the art world points out that antique ivories – often carved with virtuosity centuries ago – came from tusks that were gathered from elephant “cemeteries”, and created when these magnificent creatures roamed the plains of African and Asia in their millions. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that there were some 5m elephants in Africa until the 1930s, numbers that have dwindled by at least 50 per cent.

No art lover wants elephants to suffer, but curators and dealers oppose the new ban on two counts. The first is that since almost all the artefacts in question were made decades ago, it would have little or no effect on the slaughter of elephants at present or in the future. The second is that it would hinder art historical and curatorial work, as well as the antiques market.

Some feel that museums will be deterred from acquiring artworks seen as tainted under the proposed legislation. James Cuno, president of the J Paul Getty Trust, whose ivory holdings include a 1680s goblet – a tour de force of carving – feels that “it would inhibit our appreciation … of these antique objects” and their cultural role.

Martin Levy of Blairman’s, a leading London dealer, says: “The impact on scholarship, museum collections, private collectors – not to mention on commerce – would be huge and pointless.”

Art experts are astonished that the legislation would at the same time allow imports of “elephant sport-hunted trophies” at “two per hunter per year”. New York dealer Scott Defrin mocks what he sees as double standards: “They’ll allow hunters to bring home trophies from Africa,” he says, “ … but not antiques!” His antique ivory sales to museums have included a 17th-century St Sebastian to the Metropolitan in New York. These pieces aren’t blood-covered tusks, Defrin says: “They were made hundreds of years ago.”

US legislation on the international and domestic trade in elephant ivory has long been notoriously bureaucratic. Art specialists had urged change, but nothing like this. They wanted “passports” for individual pieces, rather than a complex system that involves a series of licence applications and six-month delays for approval. Dealers fear that the US legislation will be replicated in Europe, killing the trade completely.

New Yorker Anthony Blumka deals in the medieval, renaissance and baroque periods, when ivory was the preferred material for church and royalty. At Maastricht he will exhibit a 14th-century diptych with scenes of the Passion of Christ. He fears that restrictions will drive the trade underground: “A collector is not going to stop wanting what he craves,” he warns.

The art world is all the more unnerved because the US ban coincides with reports in the British press that Prince William had told primatologist Jane Goodall that he wants ivory antiques in the Royal Collection destroyed and that Prince Charles, his father, has requested their removal from his homes. A spokesman for the prince refused to confirm or deny a private conversation.

Critics also point to the irony of Prince William’s pledge to save wildlife coinciding with a hunting trip with his brother Harry. The wild boar and stags they hunted are not endangered, but the animal blood on the princes’ hands did not help their cause.

A full illustrated version of this article appeared in The Financial Times on March 8, 2014.

By 1979 vicuñas were almost extinct in the Andes. Now there are more than 400,000.

By: Arancha González

The United Nations will mark the first official World Wildlife Day on March 3. This.is welcome news, because unless a solution to the global poaching problem is found, iconic species such as the tiger, rhinoceros and elephant face extinction within 20 years.

At the recent London Conference on illegal Wildlife Trade, 46 countries and 11 international organizations signed a declaration that sets out a three-pronged approach to protect wildlife. The declaration calls for increasing enforcement of laws against poaching, reducing demand for wildlife products, and the “sustainable utilization” of wildlife.

While enforcement and demand reduction are necessary and clear, less is known about what sustainable use actually means-and how it can solve the over-harvesting and poaching of wild animals and plants.

Combating illegal trade . has been the focus of much recent attention. But the real question is how to set up a well-managed legal trade that is sustainably managed and benefits the poor rural communities where many threatened species are found.

Giving rural communities the right economic incentives is critical to protecting wildlife. This is difficult in countries with weak governance and high levels of poverty. Trade bans are often undermined by strong incentives to supply the market demand for the animals and the products that can be harvested from them. Bribes and intimidation from poachers and illegal wildlife traders erode such incentives even further.

Still, good examples of legal trade do exist.

Peru has turned sustainably sourced products into export successes over the past few decades. Its sustainably sourced “superfoods”, including sacha inchi, maca and cat’s claw, have gained world-wide fame for their health benefits, and as a consequence, have provided rural Peruvians with increased incomes. Peru and other Andean countries have also been very successful in bringing vicuña populations — a relative of the llama — back from the brink of extinction. That achievement dates to a 1979 agreement in which vicuña range states gave communities on the high-altitude plateau in the An- “:J dean regions of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina the rights to shear, process and sell the fine wool. Communities have protected the animals from poachers and rebuilt the vicuña population to more than 400,000.

Africa also offers examples of wildlife sustainability. In Namibia, an ecotourism program helps villages to manage communal conservancies and protect wildlife, including rhinos and lions. A number of wildlife projects in Namibia are funded in part through the sale of hunting permits for old and sick rhinos selected by professional conservationists for culling.

Some wildlife value chains are more difficult to manage sustainably or ethically. A 2012 report by the International Trade Centre, which I run, found that the trade in Southeast Asian python skins is worth $1 billion, half of which is estimated to be illegal. The skins, used mainly by the luxury fashion industry, are harvested and processed in rural villages before being exported to Europe, thus creating economic opportunities for thousands of rural households in the region. My organization is currently working with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Kering, the parent company of Gucci, a key buyer of python skins, to strengthen transparency in the trade and ensure that smuggling, the abuse of permit systems, and poor animal welfare standards are addressed.

There is no single way to manage a sustainable trade in wildlife. A successful legal trade .needs an enforceable system of export permits and harvest quotas- and animals and forests would still require protection through enforcement. A successful legal trade also depends on animal reproductive rates.

Wholesale opposition to legal trade in wildlife is mostly found in rich countries, which ignore the high financial and social costs to already vulnerable societies in enforcing trade bans. They also ignore the potential benefits of taxing the wildlife trade. This money would otherwise go to poachers. Isn’t it better to have it go to the poor?

It may not be possible to stop the wildlife trade-the worldwide demand for these animals and the products they provide is just too strong. But this World Wildlife Day, let’s focus on designing a global legal framework to ensure that communities have the incentives to conserve wildlife, rather than destroy it.

About Arancha Gonzáles:
Ms. González is the executive director of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The above article was published on March 3, 2014 in The Wall Street Journal.

Cultural snobbery savages property rights.

By: Doug Bandow

The Obama administration is good at exuding moral righteousness and pandering to the cultural elite. It does both with its plan to effectively ban the sale of all ivory in America, including that purchased or inherited legally years, decades, or even centuries ago. If you can’t prove its age, toss it in the trash or be arrested and have your property confiscated — unless you have a political exemption.

Elephants are being killed for their ivory. It’s a tragedy, but one that has been going on for years. Conservationists are understandably frustrated, but most prefer not to reflect on the failure of their own prohibitionist policies. African governments are incapable of protecting the animals from highly armed poachers, who are responding to the high demand for ivory driven by Asians and especially Chinese. Unable to deal with those responsible for the elephant carnage, environmental extremists have found a more convenient target to attack: Americans who followed the law buying and selling old ivory objects which entered the U.S. lawfully long ago.

Ivory is a beautiful material used by craftsmen around the world to create a plethora of decorative and practical objects — canes, jewelry, beer steins, musical instruments, chess sets, netsukes, religious materials, games, sculptures, and much more. Often ivory supplemented or highlighted other items — keys for pianos, stocks for guns, accents for furniture. At the time people saw nothing wrong with the practice, and the elephants whose tusks provided the necessary raw ivory died long ago.

But advocates of banning the sale of antiques, and even destroying old objets d’art, seem more interested in punishing people who bought and sold ivory legally because they bought and sold ivory, not because doing so would prevent poaching. It is an exercise in moral vanity and political posturing, not practical conservation.

Some ban proponents complain of the difficulty of distinguishing between new and old ivory. Actually, European carving disappeared decades ago: even an untrained government bureaucrat could distinguish between the ivory that filled 19th century Europe and tourist trinkets turned out today. Asian carving continues, but old and new differs in character, subject, wear, age, coloring, quality, and more. Nor do collectors of and dealers in antiques typically seek out poached ivory. Expanded prohibition might make a few activists feel good, but punishing people who followed the law and invested in perfectly legal objects won’t save a single elephant today.

The traditional rules were easy to follow. Ivory imported prior to the completion of an international convention, known as CITES, in 1989 could be sold legally. Antiques with proper certification could be imported. You could be prosecuted for violating the law, but the government had to prove its case — as it normally does when charging people with a crime or other offense.

In mid-February the administration announced that it planned on changing the standards. If you were an average person who followed the law, played by the rules, invested your money in perfectly legal objects available without restriction and requiring no documentation, too bad. Now your collection or inventory is going to be essentially valueless.

Unless you are a member of the cultural elite, such as a museum or other non-profit. Or have enough money to try to comply with the expensive new rules.

The new guidance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicates that most every auctioneer, collector, and dealer — and anyone else who has purchased or received something made of ivory — better chat with a lawyer before attempting to sell their ivory possessions. The Feds will be free to scour every antique show, auction, collectibles store, estate sale, flea market, and junk shop confiscating anything that the owner cannot prove to be old. Even if Washington does little to implement its policy, the impact on value will be substantial. Who wants to put something up for sale that could be seized by Uncle Sam if he noticed? Who wants to buy something that might be impossible to sell in the future if the Fish and Wildlife bureaucracy gets serious? You’ll get a pittance for something that cost you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Particularly striking is how the prospective rules are biased against average folks — with a middling collection or inventory of modestly priced items. It’s as if the policy was drafted to have maximum impact on people who don’t spend their time attending cocktail parties with the president.

Point One — no imports even of antiques will be allowed. Presumably no one really believes that today’s highly restricted antiques trade encourages poaching. Shipments must be accompanied by a CITES certificate and are inspected entering the country, which I know from experience. U.S. collectors will be cut off from the rest of the world simply as punishment for being collectors.

However, the rules apparently will exempt “museum and educational specimens.” Only “commercial” sales are restricted. Of course, this exception is about influence, not conservation. Under the administration’s reasoning, non-profit institutions will have a unique right to continue plundering ivory around the world and driving elephants to extinction. Perhaps I can start the Bandow Ivory Collectibles Museum, allowing me to join the president’s other important friends in their exempt status.

Point Two — exports are banned, except antiques, which must be over 100 years old, in what the government calls “exceptional circumstances, as permitted under” the Endangered Species Act. It is unclear whether the administration simply intends to increase the administrative hassle and cost of certifying shipments, or limit what can be exported. In either case, “certain noncommercial items” will be allowed, so nonprofits and others with friends in government likely will be able to hurdle any new burdens in a single bound. Collectors of sufficient means can try hiring attorneys or lobbyists. The rest of us will just get to pound sand.

Point Three — only antiques, proved through “documented evidence,” will be eligible for sale across state lines. How many antiques in America have “documented evidence” attesting to their age? For some odd reason 19th century ivory carvers were not in the habit of providing notarized statements of provenance along with the objects they were making. Which means that most antiques will be impossible to transfer across state lines. Indeed, you might not be able to sell after moving, since doing so could be treated as legally equivalent to selling across state lines.

Presumably museum transfers won’t be considered commercial even if the institution is out to make as much money as possible to fund its operations and future acquisitions. Indeed, the new policy will encourage non-profits to engage in low-key extortion with the message: “So sorry you can’t sell it since it lacks the proper documentation. But donate it to us and we can ensure a generous appraisal to get you a substantial tax deduction.”

More serious collectors and dealers with more valuable items will at least have the option of going to the trouble and expense of finding an expert and procuring a CITES certificate, when appropriate. Everyone else will be bureaucratic road kill. If you have lots of cheaper items, you’d spend most of their value trying to provide “documented evidence” to the government. Too bad you didn’t invest that money in campaign contributions to win better treatment!

Point Four — only documented old ivory, imported before 1990, can be sold even within a state. Imagine you bought a bunch of ivory items as you moved across America during your career, and decided to settle in, say, Bozeman, Montana. Want to sell your old ivory? Too bad you’re not a museum or educational institution. Go to the thriving antique metropolis of Helena and see what you can get for your collection.

More likely, of course, you won’t have any evidence as to when the items were made or brought to America.

Would every dealer in America attest that they were made decades ago? Who cares? That’s not real proof. And if you can’t prove an object’s age, tough. You can’t even take it — legally, at least — to the local flea market. Not that anyone would pay you much for something that is barely legal and could be banned at any time.

So Americans shouldn’t be fooled by administration rhetoric about still allowing legal sales. That’s only if you can provide the sort of proof that no normal person would have. Or are friends with the Interior Secretary, or a congressman feared by the Interior Secretary. Even if the Feds don’t send swarms of inspectors across America confiscating anything and everything ivory they find at the local church garage sale, the government will have crashed the price, preventing anyone from receiving anything close to what the items once were worth.

It will be expensive, but the better connected will at least have a chance of avoiding the rules. If you want to sell items that are old but not antiques in other states, you’ll need to find a broker, well-connected but discreet antique dealer, or private collector network. If you want to sell items internationally without new U.S. restrictions, you’ll need to procure a CITES certificate — it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to concoct the right documentation at a price — and carry or ship the item abroad, selling it there.

However, if you have some nice pieces that you picked up over the years or inherited from your parents, worth a few hundred or thousand dollars and would like to get some money out of them for your retirement, you’re out of luck. If you were a middle-income collector or mid-level dealer who followed the law in amassing a modest amount of ivory goods that were evidently old but undocumented, too bad. After all, you never knew it, but you are the reason tens of thousands of elephants are being killed every year!

Ironically, the new policy will reduce genuine conservation efforts directed at elephants. Today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigates poachers and their allies. The administration could attempt to better support African countries seeking to protect elephants, find and interdict illegal ivory shipments, and prosecute those who sell new ivory. Instead, Fish and Wildlife will shift away from those linked to the killing of elephants and target thousands or tens of thousands of Americans who were so stupid as to follow the rules in purchasing legal ivory.

At a stroke the administration will have multiplied the amount of ivory considered contraband: every object with even trace amounts of ivory for which no documentation is available will be illegal to sell in any form at any point. Every piece of old ivory which cannot be proven to be a century old will be illegal to sell across state lines.

The number of people breaking the law facing arrest also will explode, as anyone trafficking in old, formerly legal ivory will be as much a criminal as operators handling large, ongoing flows of new, poached materials. Collectors with large collections and dealer with large inventories, all lawfully acquired, will stand in the same legal position as those who knowingly import and sell poached ivory from elephants killed last week. The Feds won’t just have to monitor every antique shop and show in America. There is likely to be an explosion of “bone” and “faux ivory” sales on eBay, with most photos and conversations held offline. Uncle Sam will need informants and wiretaps to catch these ivory criminals.

Moreover, anyone whose investment in old ivory faces a wipeout in value by Washington’s action will have no incentive to aid the government in its campaign against new ivory. The administration inadvertently will have turned collectors and dealers into potential accomplices of poachers, since those with old ivory to sell will be tempted to work with dealers who have experience operating illegally, that is, who today handle illicit ivory work.

While proponents of the administration’s new policy are busily engaged in moral preening, more elephants will die. After which activists will look for new scapegoats. And more elephants will die.

Of course, if government can steal so much from so many, the rights to property and due process are not secure. Spend and invest in reliance on the law, and then face thousands or even millions of dollars in losses from one arbitrary rules change. But never mind so long as friends of the administration with special status find a way around the policy.

The administration should target poachers who kill elephants, not collectors and dealers who followed the law. If Fish and Wildlife does turn average Americans into criminals, Congress should refuse to fund implementation and enforcement of the rules. If necessary, members should withhold funding for agents spending their time harassing everyone except those who traffic in illicit ivory.

The campaign to save elephants should not become just another excuse to expand government power and curtail individual liberty. Doing so isn’t fair to the American people — or helpful to African elephants.

About Doug Bandow:
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former special assistant to President Reagan. He is a member of the Chess Collector’s Society. The above article was published on February 24, 2014 online on The American Spectator.