The ivory wasn’t difficult to find. Humane World for Animals investigators who visited 32 online sites in Pennsylvania and 31 stores across the state during March of 2025 identified 383 pieces being sold for a total of nearly $38,000: earrings, bracelets, necklaces, knife handles, game pieces, letter openers and cigarette holders. At least 67 of the items, offered by four auction houses, were identified as elephant ivory (the rest were made from ivory from mammoth, whale, walrus, warthog and hippo).
Whitney Teamus, Humane World senior director of investigations, says she wasn’t surprised by the findings of the investigation. She regularly sees elephant ivory when she visits antique and vintage shops in her own neighborhood.
“Our field investigators find it on day one,” she says. “You can find ivory almost anywhere—it is in everyone’s backyard. Who’s being held accountable or facing any consequences? No one.”
With a few limited exceptions, federal law bans the import, export and interstate sale of ivory from elephants. The animals are imperiled, with their numbers dwindling in Africa. Under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rules, stores and online sites can sell antique elephant ivory across state lines if they possess documentation that proves its age and origin. Instate sales of elephant ivory are generally illegal in Pennsylvania without a permit from the Commonwealth. None of the Pennsylvania sellers of elephant ivory offered or provided any such paperwork.
Humane World for Animals
Humane World for Animals
Some of those selling ivory labeled it as such or identified it verbally. Others labeled it as bone. Others could not identify the material. The ivory was usually sold on consignment, and those staffing the businesses were often neither the owners of the ivory nor the owners of the shops. Price was no indication. Ivory items sold for as little as $5 and as much as $1,150.
A bill that would make the sale of ivory from additional species, such as hippos, and of other animal parts generally illegal in Pennsylvania passed in June in the state House of Representatives with our support. We have helped pass similar laws in 13 other U.S. states and Washington, D.C., says Gabe Wigtil, program director for wildlife trafficking. The idea is to eliminate the markets for elephant ivory, he says. Poachers are less likely to slaughter elephants if there’s no demand for ivory products.
Simon Eeman/Alamy Stock photo
Contact your legislators
Do you live in Massachusetts? Encourage your legislators to co-sponsor H.3935 and S.616 and ban the trade of ivory and rhino horn products in your state.
There are signs the laws are working. In 2014, a ban on sales of elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn passed in New York. An undercover investigation from 2015 to 2018 by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation led to the seizure of 2 tons of ivory worth more than $12 million in New York City.
In 2024, a Rockland County, New York, man was convicted of felony illegal commercialization of ivory for online sales of ivory billiard cues worth approximately $70,000.
New York used to be considered the leading U.S. market for ivory, says Wigtil. Now it’s nowhere near the top according to data collected by Biologists without Borders. Neither are New Jersey or California, big markets that shrank after both states passed laws banning the sale of elephant ivory.
Pennsylvania now ranks third in online sales. Massachusetts, where we are backing an ivory ban bill, ranks second. And Florida, where no legislation has yet been introduced, is first.
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