MADAM – We have been following the ivory debate in your pages with anxious concern, in spite of being specialists in vernacular, naive and folk art, whose business would rarely be directly impacted by the near-total ivory ban planned by the government.
It seems that after many months of deliberations and ‘research’, the proposals are not fit for purpose.
They are likely to cause irreparable damage to the status, protection and legal trade in significant works of art, while simultaneously creating an administrative nightmare, with no guaranteed impact against poaching or the future wellbeing of elephants.