Bill Description:
Prohibits any person from purchasing, selling, offering for sale, possessing with intent to sell, or importing with intent to sell ivory or rhinoceros horn. Ivory is defined as any tooth or tusk from an elephant, hippopotamus, mammoth, walrus, whale, or narwhal.[teaserbreak]
Exemptions:
• Any activity that is expressly authorized under federal law.
• Ivory or rhino horn as part of a musical instrument that is less than 20% by volume of the instrument, if the owner or seller provides historical documentation demonstrating provenance and showing the item was manufactured no later than 1975.
• Ivory or rhino horn that is part of a bona fide antique and that is less than 5% by volume of the antique, if the antique status is established by the owner or seller of the antique with historical documentation demonstrating provenance and showing the antique to be not less than 100 years old.
• Educational or scientific purposes by a bona fide educational or scientific institution, as long as the transaction is not prohibited by federal law, and as long as the ivory/horn was legally acquired before Jan. 1, 1991.
Background:
This bill is intended to close a loophole in current California law that prevents the effective enforcement of existing law prohibiting the sale of ivory.
African elephants are nearing extinction due to the high price of ivory and consumer demand. An average of 96 elephants are slaughtered daily by poachers, and over 100,000 have been killed in the past 3 years. Read more about the horrific ivory trade here.
Meanwhile, rhinos are killed for their horns, which are believed to have medicinal powers in parts of Asia. This market is fueling the slaughter of more than 1,000 rhinos per year. Only 25,000 black and white rhinos remain across all of Africa, and they could become extinct in the wild in as little as 12 years.
The U.S. is the second largest ivory market in the world, after China, and also a significant destination for rhino horn. Legislation banning the trade in these products is aimed at reducing the demand.
Read the full text and follow its progress here.