Revealing the bloody trade.

The HSUS's recent nine-month investigation revealed the ugly truth that the ivory trade remains strong more than a decade after it was internationally banned—even in the United States.

HSUS investigators found a great deal of elephant ivory for sale domestically—and salespeople willing to forge receipts to give the impression that illegal new ivory carvings were legal antiques. We also discovered a demand for raw, uncarved elephant tusks in the United States, fed mainly by the sale of (so called) sport hunted trophy tusks. The law surrounding the sale of these tusks is unclear, and even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service admits that this is a very gray area.

Indeed, this domestic ivory trade is largely uncontrolled because of ambiguities and loopholes in the laws and because of the difficulty in distinguishing between legal and illegal ivory. And the Internet makes controlling the illegal ivory trade even more difficult. Ivory cybertrading from unregulated sources occurs through auction websites like eBay. Our monitoring revealed that most ivory sellers on eBay are either ignorant of the import and export restrictions or are willing to flout the law by mislabeling ivory items and shipping them without permits.

To trace the sources of ivory for sale domestically, HSUS investigators traveled to Asia. Elephant ivory was prevalent throughout Hong Kong, from small roadside trinket shops to large commercial department stores. Local ivory sellers told us that small quantities of ivory could be smuggled in personal luggage out of Hong Kong and into the United States without much risk of discovery.

Our investigators also journeyed to Kenya, where they saw firsthand the horrific result of ivory trade—the remains of an entire family of elephants poached for their tusks last March. HSUS investigators joined antipoaching patrols by the Kenya Wildlife Service and by rangers at a private wildlife sanctuary. We found that today's poacher is as well armed as any guerilla fighter anywhere in the world.

The real price of the ivory trade—the ugliness of ivory—is measured in poached elephants and rangers killed trying to protect them. Only by eliminating the ivory market—around the world and in the United States—can we hope to stop the slaughter. For more information on elephants and the ivory trade, call our Wildlife and Habitat Protection staff at 202-452-1100.