SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ivory dealers in San Francisco’s
Chinatown say they’re not worried by a proposed federal crackdown on elephant ivory sales announced by President Barack Obama.
Obama unveiled proposed limits on interstate sales of elephant ivory during a state visit to Kenya on Saturday.
In the United States, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the country’s two biggest hubs for ivory after New York City. However, merchants in San Francisco said Monday that the carved tusks they were selling came from extinct wooly mammoths, not endangered elephants.
A 2014 report for the National Resources Defense Council said illegally sold elephant ivory in the United States typically is falsely shipped as mammoth ivory.
Proposed state legislation by California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins would greatly restrict sales of ivory and ivory lookalikes from elephants, mammoths and other creatures.
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