This is sickening, no one has the ability to see that these are genuine historical antiques that deserve to be preserved in the same way that elephants need to be saved

How is this helping save elephants?

Next we will ban and destroy all types of wood to save the endangered trees. Stupid is as Stupid does is the reason why. It's not about saving anything its more about destroying things. :(

Ironic that you should mention wood, in light of the fines that the despicable corporate giant Gibson Guitars had leveled against them.A $300,000 fine, a forced donation of $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the forfeiture of wood valued at $261,844; I guess they needed tinder to get the fire started on all of the confiscated ivory.
Gibson Guitar Co. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz stated that they settled because it would have cost millions and taken years to resolve in court.
I wonder how easy it would be for an American to get his name off of a "No Fly List ?"

Thank God I ripped up the Brazilian Mahogany covering my decks and replaced the wood with Azek plastic decking! :eek: :rolleyes:

That may be worse.Isn't that an oil based product, thus contributing to corporate greed, global warming and stealing the life force from Mother Gaia !

It's more for the own guilty conscience than for the elephants.

What a world, we are destroying unique artworks to save elephants, which are died 100 years ago.

We destroy old, valuable and rare artworks to save the environment and at the same time we have three cars or more for one family.


Roland

Yes, but I can sleep easy every night safe in the knowledge it will never biodegrade. ;) :rolleyes:

Sounds like a fair trade off to me.

i suspect a well meaning herd of touchy-feely 'ecologists' got together with a similar flock of politicians in order to share the one brain cell they possessed in order to 'save the ellyfants'. they decided that a massive deployement of nucular level force was required, and being bird-brains (sorry to insult all the birds out there who are much smarter than politicians) they picked the simplist approach. ban the trade in ivory and destroy any they come across being traded. there, problem solved. we are lucky they did not decide the best way to end the trade in elly ivory was to wipe out all the ellyfants. that'd do it.

reminds me of a tale i was told in my USCG days about an expedition one of our icebreakers took to the south polar seas to support a scientific expedition to study a small group of a species of seal going extinct so they could find out why. there apparently were only five left a male and 4 females. they found them, darted them, took their measurements and sadly two of the seals had died from overdoses of anaesthesia. included the male. the study of course sadly noted that the three females were the last of their species and the seals had no hope of recovery. i concluded that scientific studies cause extinctions.

I'm glad you told me that "man," was responsible for the demise of the male seal; for a moment I thought that the other 4 female seals incessantly talked to him, causing him to take his own life.

no. it was however female scientists that overdosed them. or maybe they talked them to death. we did a 'scientific' patrol to the north polar seas on our icebreaker to study the mating habits of walrus, they even brought a mini sub & of course CCTV to record it all. three months cruising off the north coast of alaska, occasionally dipping the sub in the water. the scientists spent a lot of time smoking strange smelling tobacco in hand rolled cigarettes. (:)) a few million taxpayer dollars later all they got was about 10 minutes of vague walrussy shapes moving thru the murky water. one of the more important scientists ate dinner with us occasionally in the wardroom (officer's mess). i once told him 'i know a marine smarter than you'. our helo pilot objected to that and was a bit angry - he outranked me as well as being bigger than me- he was an ex-marine pilot that has transferred to the USCG. took a bit of apologizing to him to get out of that one.

"Walrussy shapes moving through the murky water," sounds like a typical summer's day with tourists at Virginia Beach;heck, they could seen herds of "walrussy shapes," and saved millions.
I wonder how much it would cost today to go on the H.M.S. Beagle for a 5 year voyage and accomplish what Charles Darwin did; would it even be possible ?

va. beach - not to far from one of my old haunts at the USCG base at yorktown, spent 3 months there in the fall of '68 on a couple of training courses after i got commissioned. went to NOLA for 3 yrs after that. drove thru the battle field at least twice a day as we (me & wife #1) lived off base. very eerie on foggy mornings. i've crawled all over the fortifications & been thru the other exhibits there too. much more impressive than the similar field in metarie, la. where gen. packenham got his self ventilated & stuffed in a brandy casket in 1815.

Have you read Joseph Banks A Life by Patrick O'Brian?
Good book.

Speaking of seals....never had any seals around here.
Now we do, and they have brought...... :(

killer whales, saw a pod or two of those up in the aleutians, along with a bunch of seals, offshore tho, the whales must have had other things in their minds as they swam right past the unconcerned seals that were mobbing our cutter along with a flock of gulls.(cookie was throwing fish & crab bits over the rail.)

There is a great deal of history around the USCG base in Yorktown ,Richmond, Petersburg, etc.; I have friends, who on any given day, metal detecting can come up with a bucket of Civil War bullets or earlier round balls from the Revolutionary War.If you were stationed in Yorktown, then you probably got one of the best grilled lobster tails and a wonderful Greek salad at Nick's Resturant;sadly it is no longer there.
I have not read the book " Joseph Banks A life by Patrick O'Brian," but it is now on my list and I will.
Funny you should mention seals; my Chiropractor told me just yesterday that he saw one on the beach and even though he admitted that he had been drinking and it was dark, he swears it to be so.It was probably just a homeless person.
In our beach area we can now offer you bites by sharks, death by umbrellas, a better chance to win the lottery than finding a parking space, flesh eating bacteria and an improbable but possible encounter with a seal.

Bro, that's a White Pointer .... they came with the seals.
Those seals consume roughly 500,000 pounds of fish per day.

Conservation's a double edged sword.

This shark is an average sized Grinner.

Amazing! The shark and the man are sharing an inter-species moment, a common bond, maybe even friendship; you can tell by the eye to eye contact.Maybe they really only bite us by accident, they don't like the taste of human flesh, or they do want to be our friends................right, that shark is looking at that guy like he is a double cheeseburger with all of the fixings !

aw, it's only a baby hatchling. his father will be angry. you don't want to see him when he gets angry.

I think "you're gonna need a bigger boat!"
(as spoken by Quint, "Jaws,"1975)

SHARK LIVES MATTER:
A Miami-Dade County man, Angel Luis Velazquez, who was fishing at the Torch Ramrod Channel bridge in the Keys was arrested by Deputy Donald Stullken for having a gutted and beheaded shark inside his cooler.Florida state law "prohibits anyone in or on state waters from possessing a shark that has been beheaded, filleted, or finned."
He was arrested and charged with a 2nd degree misdemeanor under Florida Administrative Code 68B-44.004, then booked and jailed.At this time it can not be confirmed as to whether the ACLU would sue Mr. Velazquez for civil liability on behalf of the dead shark's next of kin.It appears it is now legal for sharks to eat humans, but people can not eat sharks.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might see the ban on ivory, wood, fishing, taking away our second amendment rights, freedom of speech, etc. by the government as a slowly tightening haul seine net, who we, like the fish, don't realize that we have lost our freedoms until we are boxed and iced......but that would be crazy, right ?
The original article was by Michael Stern, mstern@miamiherald.com

the sharks are winning.

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com...ivory-seizure/

:eek: :confused: :mad:

Here the text, in case the link might dissapear in future.
Interesting info, I was not aware of this CITES 2013 guidelines.

The guideline makes some sense. But do they really think a barometer antique dealer is part of illegal Ivory smuggling and than offers for sale a piece of antique Ivory to blow his cover ?
Sad sad sad waste of police work.

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Quote...
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Clocks and barometer specialist Russ Allen, who runs Steam Mill Clocks, told ATG that 10 officers were involved in the seizure last month when he was arrested and bailed. It is believed a member of the public alerted Derbyshire police to the bronze mounted ivory thermometer that he had offered for sale online.

The incident has now been resolved with the police via a community resolution which enforced the seizure of the item.

Allen, who was represented by solicitor Bill Soughton at Johnson Partnership in Nottingham, was interviewed at Chesterfield Police Station by a local police officer and an officer from the Wildlife Crime Unit. The thermometer is an antique and pre-1947, but it is insufficiently worked under the amended 2013 CITES guidelines and therefore not legal to sell.

Alert Trade

Allen had not realised the item was not deemed worked and now hopes to alert other dealers to the regulation surrounding ivory. He said: “The trade need to be aware. We must stick together and pool our combined expertise to the benefit as a whole. The endangered species legislation is not going away and I suspect that it is going to get much stricter.”

A police spokeswoman confirmed a community resolution, which is used for less serious offences or anti-social behaviour, had been agreed and the item seized.

Maggie Campbell Pedersen, The Gemmological Association of Great Britain president and author of the 2015 book Ivory, said the December 2013 guidance changes on worked and unworked ivory had not been “widely enough publicised”.

“Simply to polish and mount an elephant tusk is no longer sufficient. It must now be carved on most of its surface to be considered ‘worked’.”

Allen said at the time of the police swoop, the police arrived “in a transit van and with CID and plain clothes policeman”.

He added: “The search warrant authorised the search and seizure of computers, telephones and bank records, the loss of which is bound to have significant consequences to anyone engaged in legitimate business. The police action is draconian and it makes me wonder how many perfectly legitimate and honest dealers are putting themselves unknowingly at risk.”

For me this is all BS and has something of a witch hunt and public burning of books.

They should take countermeasurements with hefty punisments to prevent the elephants getting slaughtered in Africa instead of harrasing collectors and playing the political correctness card with the effect of nothing.
I think in reality 95% of all collectors are against contemporary elephant hunting.

Anyway i bet a lot of "mammuth-ivory" will pass the customs and hit the markets in south east asia.

Very well said! Agree complete with you. :)

What about the ivory scales of antique weapons?

In the vast majority, the hilts are simply polished, not carved.

Does this mean that all aantique weapons featuring simply polished ivory must be destroyed?!

Does this mean that all Ottoman Kilij swords with rhino hilts should be confiscated and destroyed?!

What about grand-granny's cutlery that has been in the family for 150 years?! Should it be confiscated and desrtoyed if put on sale?

Am I missing something?

:mad:

Pure insanity.

The information I have been given by a good friend living in the USA seems to indicate that at least some of the states in the USA are poised to become even worse than this matter reported to us by Asomotif. Indeed, he anticipates the situation to become so threatening that he gave me his collection of antique ivory keris hilts in order to avoid their possible destruction.

When I hear of the anti-ivory things going on in some parts of the world, the thing that always comes into my mind is antique musical instruments and religious artifacts.

Can we expect to see this entire segment of western material culture destroyed in the future?

The United States has banned the sale of African elephant ivory across state lines; California has gone further and banned the sale of all ivory, no matter what the original animal, within the state.

In both cases, antiques (100 years or older) and musical instruments (manufactured before 1975) are exempted. Of course, the burden of proof is on the seller, unfortunately. This will make it more difficult to sell legitimate antiques, and legitimate antique ivory caught up in enforcement may indeed be destroyed if customs authorities are uncertain.

That being said, it's pretty difficult to enforce prohibitions of sale across state lines. There aren't any customs inspections as you cross from one state to the next, by air or land. The mail isn't inspected.

To anticipate the authorities entering one's home and seizing antique ivory weapons is a little far-fetched. Perhaps some distrust of the government is warranted, given historical fact, but it seems a little paranoid to think you are at risk for owning ethnographic weapons with antique ivory.