By Peter Douglas
La Trobe MP Jason Wood has continued to advocate on animal welfare policy, this time calling for Australia to act and close up markets for elephant and rhinoceros horn.
Last year, Mr Wood was integral in leading the charge to ban testing cosmetics on animals in Australia, as well as in 2015 helping implement a ban on the importation of lion trophies and body parts.
Much of this change has come through an unlikely alliance with the Animal Justice Party, as well as support from Ferny Creek’s Donalea Patman OAM from For the Love of Wildlife.
In his speech to Federal Parliament on 4 September, Mr Wood said Australia remained an integral part of the international ivory trade, with the domestic market for ivory and rhino horn remaining unregulated.
Mr Wood said Australians continued to import ivory in Australia for personal use.
“All those people are bringing back what they think are knick-knacks into Australia, little items they think would look nice on their mantelpiece, but, in actual fact, they’ve come from the death of a rhino or an elephant,” he said.
Mr Wood said Australian officials had this year seized 300 imports of elephant ivory and made 70 seizures of rhinoceros horn.
There had been no prosecutions.
Mr Wood said action needed to be taken.
“One elephant dies every 15 minutes, which means that, just while parliament has been sitting today, nearly 40 more of these noble beasts have lost their lives purely for the value of their tusks,” he said.
“Imagine the horror of the rhinos when a poacher goes up behind a mother rhino, slices its ankles with a machete and then slashes its face off while still alive to take the rhino horn – and this can be with a young rhino nearby.”
Meanwhile, Ms Patman said there were obvious incentives for criminals.
A pair of ivory tusks can fetch as much as $30,000 at Australian auction houses, while a carved rhino horn libation cup brings as much as $67,000.
“There’s a general perception that if rhino horn or ivory is in our country, then it must be legal,” she said.
“Yet it’s impossible to age these products just by looking at them.”
“With auction rooms, antique dealers, bric-a-brac and vintage stores left to self-regulate, illegal products can easily be laundered through our domestic market.”
