Legislation

Ivory Free Connecticut

In a letter shared among constituents, your urgent help is needed.

The proposed ivory ban bill in Connecticut-HB 5788, is scheduled for a hearing at the Environment Committee this Friday at 12:30pm. The bill would prohibit the sales of ivory of elephants, mammoth, and a few other marine mammal species and rhino horns. There are narrow exemptions for musical instruments and de minimis antique items containing less than 20 percent of ivory, similar to the exemptions in the enacted New York law. We expect continued heavy push back from antique dealers and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

It looks like all public testimony submitted so far is in opposition to the bill, so it will be good to encourage people in favor of the bill to submit.
https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/CommDocTmyBillAllComm.asp?bill=HB-05578&doc_year=2016

The priority is to get Connecticut-based supporters to submit support testimony. Please ask your Connecticut-based friends to submit testimonies in “Support of HB 5578, Ivory/rhino horn ban bill”. Public hearing testimonies can be emailed to: envtestimony@cga.ct.gov

Please note: Out-of-state supporters are not useful and possibly detrimental UNLESS they make a link to Connecticut in some way. If you have out-of-state advocates who want to submit testimony, please be sure to ask that they provide a Connecticut angle (e.g., they do business here, they would boycott travel to Connecticut if we do not take action on the ivory ban bill, etc.).

Thank you so much for your compassionate advocacy for elephants.

Photo Credit; WWF

Dear Cleveland Orchestra,

My name is Christina LaMonica, and I am the Founder of Ivory Free Ohio, a grassroots organization dedicated to outlawing all intra-state sales of Ivory, Rhino Horn, and Trophy Hunting products in our state without exemption. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve communicated via telephone and emails regarding our movement and your continued support.

As you are aware, we’ve worked diligently with Senator Frank LaRose and his staff, educating them on the adverse effects of the Ivory trade while creating legislation that protects our national security and helps Africa’s keystone species from extinction.

Using an ax, machete, and chainsaw, poachers hack the faces of Elephants and Rhinos while they are still alive. Photo Credit; The Tsavo Trust

The United States is the largest consumer of Ivory and Rhino Horn products- 2nd to China. One Elephant is slaughtered every 15 minutes. That’s four an hour, 96 a day, 672 a week, 2,880 a month, and 34,560 a year. And in the time it took you and your constituents (Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Cleveland Museum of Art) to hijack our Ivory Bill, over 25,000 Elephants have been killed for their Ivory tusks.

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