Our Story

In 2013, nonprofit wildlife organizations joined with animal rights groups to petition governments to ban the sale of ivory based on wildly exaggerated claims of elephant extinction. Beginning with a scrimshander, a wide variety of collectors and businesses who own and trade items made in part of ivory that had been imported to the US decades before the proposed ban joined together to oppose the overbroad and harmful bans that undermine successful conservation programs and ultimately only raise funds for Animal Rights aligned groups.

Despite our efforts, the Obama administration enacted federal regulations that criminalized practically all trade of legally imported ivory between states in the US.  Animal Rights groups continued to press for ivory bans within each state to further frustrate and confuse people about elephants in Africa and how legally traded ivory could help them, and we have successfully prevented ivory bans from being enacted in most states.