State Sen. Marko Liias is a good friend of mine, and a fine senator, but in supporting Initiative 1401 he took at face value and relied on statements made by the proponents that are demonstrably not true.
He is wrong on this issue, and The Herald is wrong for not digging deeper.
A diligent reporter for Northwest Public Radio through a Freedom of Information request, found that the alleged “50 seizures” of ivory products in Washington were almost exclusively tourists coming back with a piece of ivory jewelry bought abroad who didn’t know it was illegal to bring home. They were not “traffickers,” and the fact they weren’t prosecuted was not a bad thing. They did lose their jewelry. I’m sure the proponents would have liked them to be jailed.
Over and over the proponents claim the U. S. is the second largest market for “illegal” ivory in the world. The study they are citing was written by Dr. Daniel Stiles, a Ph.D. in anthropology from Berkley, who is the world’s leading authority on ivory trafficking. He was even hired by Paul Allen to study the ivory market in America, but his report will never see the light of day and he is muzzled by a Vulcan “non-disclosure” agreement.
He later testified to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department that he was being misquoted and the U.S. market is of “legal” ivory, brought here before its importation was made illegal. He testified that there is almost no market for smuggled ivory in the United States and the destination for poached ivory were places like China, Thailand and Vietnam. He went on to say that chasing antique collectors would take valuable resources away from going after the real criminals, the poachers and traffickers in Africa and the Far East. His expertise, experience and opinion do not support the emotional appeal of Initiative 1401’s proponents.
International treaties, federal laws and even state laws make poaching and trafficking in new ivory serious crimes already. What Initiative 1401 wants to do is to make antiques containing ivory worthless. You wouldn’t be able to buy or sell any antique with more than 15 percent ivory in it or any antique with less than 15 percent ivory unless it was more than 100 years old and you had all the paperwork to prove provenance to when it was made. Chess sets, mah-jongg tiles, poker chips, dominos, statuettes, beads and buttons all would become worthless. You could donate them to a museum or pass them to your heirs, but they couldn’t sell them or give them away either.
This is wrong! It is unconstitutionally taking away property for no good reason. Antiques 50, 100 or 200 years old, bought legally and owned legally are not the problem. Vilifying antique collectors won’t save elephants. Only vastly increasing foreign aid to capture and prosecute the real criminals like the recent “Queen of Ivory” Yang Feng Glan in Tanzania will ever do that. Vote no on Initiative 1401.
Stuart Halsan is an attorney and a former Democratic state senator from Centralia. He is an antique collector and chairman of the Legal Ivory Rights Coalition Committee, legalivoryrightscoalition.org
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