14 DAY TRIAL // One of the pieces of news making headlines today is the one concerning Prince William's allegedly vowing to have all the ivory in Buckingham Palace destroyed in order to send a message to poachers and traffickers.
As much as conservationists would love it if this were to happen, it must be said that claims that Prince William has made one such statement are somewhat misleading.
Granted, the Duke of Cambridge did tackle the topic during a casual conversation with leading primatologist Jane Goodall. However, he did not say anything about planning to strip Buckingham Palace of its ivory.
On the contrary, all he said was that he would “like to see all the ivory owned by Buckingham Palace destroyed,” Mirror reports.
This basically means that, were someone to come forward and start smashing said ivory collection, Prince William would probably not try to stop them.
However, for the time being at least, the Duke of Cambridge has to intention to take steps towards ridding Buckingham Palace of the ivory items stored within its perimeter.
Talking to the press, Conservative Member of Parliament Zac Goldsmith congratulated the Prince for saying that the Buckingham Palace's ivory collection should probably be destroyed.
“It's difficult to imagine a stronger symbol of the horrors of ivory than Buckingham Palace publicly destroying its own. Good for Prince William for pushing this,” he said.
Art critic Brian Sewell, on the other hand, argued that, although putting an end to poaching without delay was mandatory, destroying works of art created hundreds of years ago just to send a message to poachers made little – if any – sense.
“I can't see the connection between saving elephants and destroying works of art made centuries ago,” the art critic stressed.
Although several countries have destroyed their national ivory stockpiles in recent years, the fact remains that the tusks and items that they got rid of were all confiscated from traffickers and poachers, and not artworks that meant something to each country's culture and history.