Given that his daughter was in Kenya volunteering, we can take it as read that she is a caring and sensitive person seeing dreadful and upsetting scenes connected with ivory poaching.
But what I cannot accept is how she related what she saw to her family’s ownership of a pre-1947 ivory carving. That she was able to convince her father on this point is possibly the most worrying part of this story. In this relatively small and contained example, the emotive argument has won.
Killing elephants and supplying ivory to the modern trade must be stopped, but surely not by penalising centuries of world culture and craftsmanship?
Nicholas Mitchell
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