Can the US Ivory Ban Actually Stop Poaching?

When you consider the fact that African elephant populations have been rapidly declining in recent years, largely due to poaching, it might seem crazy to think that selling elephant ivory is still legal in the US. Well, it was until now.

On Thursday, the US Fish and Wildlife Services announced a near total ban on the import, export, and interstate trade of elephant ivory in the US. The new rules do make some exceptions for a few items like family heirloom artworks or antique musical instruments with small ivory inlays, but it largely puts a stop to any ivory products being bought and sold in the US. Still the question remains: does banning ivory in the US really do anything to stop poaching in Africa?

The US is the second-largest market for poached ivory in the world, and although new, poached ivory has been banned for decades, the legal trade of antique ivory has served as a cover-up for poached items. The US has only recently has started cracking down on the legal trade. President Obama announced his plans to tighten up ivory bans last year, and the states with the three largest illegal ivory markets—New York, California, and Hawaii—have all recently enacted ivory-banning laws. There are two other states that already ban ivory (New Jersey and Washington) and 14 more states have proposals, but in-state ivory sales are still legal in much of the US. Closing those markets, and getting other countries like China to follow through on their ivory-ban promises, will all help to take a significant bite out of the demand for poached ivory.

It might seem like closing legal markets will only drive up the price—making ivory harder to get and therefore more valuable—but the Wildlife Conservation Society spokesperson John Calvelli told me so far that doesn't seem to be true.

"The moment we started these conversations about closing markets, the price of ivory was cut in half, and that was confirmed by the State Department at a dinner I just had with one of their senior leaders this week," Calvelli said. "The price of ivory has been cut in half just from us talking about closing ivory markets."

That might be because a lot of the people currently buying ivory on the legal market probably wouldn't risk trying to purchase it illegally. Regardless, shutting down the legal trade is an necessary step towards ending the demand for poaching.

"We've had a regulated market and we almost saw the extinction of the species. That's what we had," Calvelli told me. "What we've been doing is clearly not working. There's just nothing that can be done to have a sustainable ivory market. The past 20 years proves that."

But Calvelli emphasized that banning ivory globally is only one part of the ongoing effort to conserve elephants. There's also work that needs to be done on the ground to help wildlife enforcement officers become better equipped to stop poachers, and cracking down on ports where ivory is trafficked.

There may always be an underground market for poached ivory, but if we can chip away at the demand enough to allow the elephant populations to recover, we might not see these creatures extinct in our lifetime—currently a very real threat.