Blogging About Critters Since 2007

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

US Fish and Wildlife Offers Ivory Identification Guide

Wonder if something is made from illegal ivory? US Fish and Wildlife has a guide for identification.

From the web page....

This is a web version of the Identification Guide for Ivory and Ivory Substitutes by Edgard O. Espinoza and Mary-Jacque Mann, published in cooperation with the CITES Secretariat, and was developed to give information about a nondestructive and visual means of tentatively distinguishing clearly legal ivory from suspected illegal ivory at ports of entry....

One point which must be emphasized: while the methods described in this handbook are reliable for the purposes described (i.e. tentative visual identification, and "probable cause" to seize as evidence), an examination of the carved ivory object by a trained scientist is still necessary to obtain a positive identification of the species source.

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