New York Court Upholds Ban on Sale of Ivory After being Challenged

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A federal court in New York struck down a challenge to the ban on the sale / display of ivory from elephants & rhinos after being challenged by Antique & Art associations in 2018. The Art & Antique Dealers League of America & the National Antique & Art Dealers Association of America, filed their case in 2018 claiming that the ban on the sale of ivory was unconstitutional. The case was also intervened by several animal welfare and conservation organizations who aided the New York court in defending the State Ivory Law. 

Both elephants and rhinos face the possibility of extinction if drastic measures to protect them are not maintained. Both species face incredible perils in the wild that are contributing to the decline in their numbers. Their perils include habitat loss, poaching, trophy hunting, climate change related food and water loss, fragmentation, and continued conflicts with local human populations. Both species have seen their numbers drop, although rehabilitation of rhinos continues to aid in their repopulation. Unfortunately, rhinos rarely exist in the wild outside of national parks where they are protected because of continued and vigilant poaching in the country. In the case of elephants, their numbers have dropped by 76% since 2002 according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. 

Knowing what we know about the possibility of extinction for these beautiful animals, it's absolutely abhorrent that any group would be trying to challenge a law that protects these animals from being poached for their horns. To argue in defense of letting these animals be shot and killed for their ivory is both compassionless and completely out of touch with the reality of what these animals are enduring. To be so selfishly concerned with selling & displaying ivory products despite the endless perils these animals face, really demonstrates the continued divide between citizens of our planet and our understanding of conservation. This divide between people who fight for these animals that face extinction and those who don't seem to care about their survival is a continued issue that is plaguing hundreds of thousands of species on our planet. 

I've said this countless times before, but unless we have global cooperation in protecting endangered animals, we will continue to fight a losing battle. We have people fighting to protect these animals every single day while simultaneously witnessing people shooting them for sport or for their ivory. We must take aggressive action if we intend to prevent the inevitable extinction of these animals. We must devalue ivory, there is no other option. As this story demonstrates, there are still those out there who are fighting to overturn bans on ivory sales despite the fact that rhinos and elephants face uncertainty. There are still those arguing in defense of trophy hunting despite evidence that those supposed "conservation" funds are doing absolutely nothing to conserve either species. We are fighting against ourselves when it comes to conservation and this is why we have continued conflicts of interest when it comes to conservation of a species.