Summary: The United States Fish and Wildlife Service held its second Ivory Crush in Times Square in June. The event helped raise awareness about the illegal ivory trade, and the threat it still poses to African elephants. While interning in NYC, I was able to attend the event, and this post describes my experience, as well as why events like these are important for elephant conservation.

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By Brittany Wright

 On Friday June 19th, Times Square was slightly louder than usual due to an industrial-sized rock crusher. The equipment was not there for construction, but for elephant conservation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service staged its second Ivory Crush, and crushed over one ton of confiscated ivory. Top government officials, like Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and USFWS Director Dan Ashe, addressed the crowd before the crush about the importance of the elephant conservation and what the crush signals to the rest of the world.

I am interning at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York this summer and convinced a few of my fellow interns to come to Times Square with me to witness the crush. The event gained a lot of attention from people walking through Times Square. People would stop to take pictures and read the various informational signs that FWS had posted around the area. Elephant advocates and enthusiasts gathered in Times Square with tee-shirts and signs, chanting as the crush began. The crowd cheered loudly—though not as loud as the machine—when the first large tusk made its way up the conveyor belt and dropped into the crusher below. The crush lasted for over two hours, turning one ton of ivory into a pile of dust.

The Times Square crush was the second event held by FWS in an effort to raise public awareness about the illegal ivory trade and its devastating impact on elephant populations. In 2013 FWS had its first ivory crush in Denver, Colorado where it destroyed over 6 tons of confiscated ivory. Starting in 1989, 14 different countries destroyed over 130 tons of ivory. The Denver crush revived the global movement, and in the past three years, many countries around the world held similar events to destroy their confiscated ivory. China, Chad, France, Belgium, Hong Kong and the Philippines all held similar events, either burning or crushing portions of their confiscated ivory to remove the pieces from the market and send a message of solidarity towards ending the illegal ivory trade. Most importantly, at the China crush, government offices vowed to stop the legal domestic trade of ivory. Events like these are critical, both to remove the pieces from the illegal market, and to show that ivory no longer has commercial value.

Even though CITES banned the international trade of ivory over two decades ago, the demand for ivory is still high. According to FWS, an elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its ivory. From 2010 to 2012, approximately 100,000 elephants were killed for their ivory tusks. Countries in Africa have taken steps to help protect elephants, but if there is still a market for ivory the poaching will continue. New York City remains an epicenter for illegal wildlife trade, and the public awareness generated by an event like this can be as an important as removing the ivory from the market. After FWS confiscates ivory, there is little else it can do with it. The ivory cannot be sold or repurposed because it was brought into the country illegally. Instead FWS decided to destroy the ivory, sending a very clear message that the illegal trade of ivory must be stopped. FWS plans to use the crushed ivory to make an elephant memorial. The FWS held a design contest earlier this year after the first Denver crush soliciting ideas for the monument.

Elephants are not out of the woods yet, but events like these help raise the awareness of the very real problem of the illegal ivory trade, and the role the United States plays in stopping it. Stomping out the illegal ivory market is essential to ensuring the survival of the species, and events like the Time Square Ivory Crush send strong message to the rest of the world: stop the illegal trade of ivory. Elephants are far too precious for their ivory to end up as a trinket on a shelf.

Brittany Wright is a 3L at Vermont Law School, working towards her Masters of Environmental Law and Policy degree and a Water Law Certificate. Prior to law school, she attended Hofstra University were she earned a B.A. in Urban Ecology. She is a managing editor on the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law. She is currently interning with the Natural Resources Defense Council as a legal intern in the Oceans Program. She plans on working in the field of ocean law, and using her law degree to protect ocean habitat. She enjoys go to the beach and hiking with her beagle Rio.

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