Auction houses sell valuable elephant ivory days before ban takes effect

Exclusive: Dealers pocketed at least £800,000 last month as owners rushed to offload trinkets: ‘The pieces are hideous,’ says conservationist

Sales of ivory have shown an upward trend since the start of this year (the-saleroom.com)

Auction houses sold ivory goods for thousands of pounds just days before a ban on selling such items was set to take effect, analysis shows.

Under the new law, which comes into force today (Monday), anyone buying or selling items made from the tusks of endangered elephants can be given an unlimited fine or jailed for up to five years.

But in the final two weeks of last month, dozens of dealers staged sales of ivory – making an estimated £85,000 profit.

More ivory was sold than in an average month before lockdown, leading conservationists to suggest that owners were offloading their items and cashing in before the ban took effect.

Around 20,000 elephants are poached every year for their tusks, causing populations to plummet dangerously, according to wildlife organisations.

Legal ivory markets provide a “smokescreen” for illegal trade, allowing newly poached ivory to be passed off as authorised.

After years of being lobbied and various delays, the government finally passed the Ivory Act in 2018, and earlier this year ministers announced that from 6 June, the import, export and dealing of items containing elephant ivory would be banned.

Owners of ivory were encouraged to surrender their items so that they could be handed to a government agency for safe disposal, to prevent them from re-entering the marketplace and fuelling the trade.

Thousands of items were handed in, from whole tusks to carvings, figurines and walking sticks.

But now analysis by an independent expert shows that 165 UK auction houses profited from selling at least 2,754 ivory items last month, for a total of £842,567.

In the last full week of May, 793 trinkets and decorative items went under the hammer, with sale prices ranging from £5 to £259,995.

Pete Matthews, a co-founder of the Two Million Tusks organisation, which campaigns to save elephants, calculated on the basis of recorded sales that the auction houses together made profits of £64,416 from selling at least 143 ivory items in that week alone. Some lots contained more than one item.

It is estimated that 20,000 elephants are killed for their tusks each year (Ifaw)

The previous week, they pocketed £30,492 from selling at least 87 items for prices up to £7,495.

In the week of 8-14 May, they auctioned 103 ivory lots, worth up to £12,997, making £61,306 profit between them, it is estimated.

The profit figures are based on average commission fees for both buyers and sellers, and other lot charges.

On the last day of May, one auction house sold 123 ivory lots, mostly Japanese and Chinese carved ornaments.

Sales of ivory have shown an upward trend since the start of this year. While the sales were perfectly legal, critics said the rise in profiting from poaching endangered species was unethical.

Louise Ravula, another co-founder of Two Million Tusks, said: “Ivory sales have consistently been around 2,000 lots per month, even since the publication of our investigation into ivory sales in 2017.

“Despite the ban, there has remained a strong appetite within British auction houses for ivory. The pieces are obviously hideous, as they caused the death of an elephant, but they are also aesthetically some of the ugliest pieces we have seen. They represent the true face of auction houses.

“We wholeheartedly welcome the overdue introduction and enforcement of the Ivory Bill 2018.”

A spokesperson for the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers declined to comment on the figures, but said dealers had done nothing illegal and that the ban was unlikely to greatly affect business because they had known for years that it was coming.

Only items that have been registered or have an exemption certificate may be traded in future. To qualify, they must be of “outstandingly high artistic, cultural or historical value”.

Animal welfare minister Lord Goldsmith said: “The world-leading Ivory Act coming into force represents a landmark moment in securing the survival of elephants across the globe for future generations.”

The government says it is considering extending the ban to other ivory-bearing species, such as hippos, walruses and killer whales, and will publish its consultation response this year.