U.S. officials just destroyed one ton of illegal ivory in Times Square

More than one ton of illegal ivory was destroyed by an industrial rock crusher in Times Square as part of the Obama administration’s crackdown on international poaching and wildlife trafficking rings. Ivory that is illegally traded cannot be sold in U.S. markets.

"I wrote to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to request an ivory crush in Times Square in my district because New York City is the epicenter of the illegal ivory trade. An elephant is killed every 15 minutes," State Sen. Brad Hoylman said in a statement released by the United States Department of the Interior. "If we are to protect this magnificent species from extinction we need to raise awareness about the trade of illegal ivory and choke off consumer demand."

Most of the ivory destroyed in Times Square was confiscated from Philadelphia's Victor Gordon, an art and antiques dealer who pled guilty to smuggling African elephant ivory into the U.S. Other ivory products were seized in operations by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Los Angeles Police Department.

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New research shows that elephant DNA can be extracted from dung and matched with ivory, potentially leading to a crackdown on international trade. Researchers were able to identify that most forest elephant tusks came from Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, or the Central African Republic, allowing law enforcement officials to target critical regions.