[URBAN NOTE] "Burlington evidence room the final resting place for many ivory artifacts"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Peter Goffin reports on a very sad repository in Burlington for ivory objects, among others, caught by customs.

Lonny Coote sweeps his hand over a snow leopard pelt and a tin of caviar, reaches past a stuffed parrot, exotic medicines, $11,000 alligator shoes, and points to a tiny white figurine.

It’s ivory, delicately carved into a three-inch elephant and mounted on a little wooden platform. It sits next to a short elephant tusk.

“These were seized from 888 Auctions,” he says.

Coote is regional director of Environment Canada’s Wildlife Enforcement Directorate, the government body that polices the trade of endangered and threatened species.

His team’s “evidence room,” in a non-descript government building in Burlington, Ont., is the final resting place for hundreds of trophies, tchotchkes and fashion mistakes imported or exported illegally and confiscated by the government.

888 Auctions, a Richmond Hill-based seller of antiques, pleaded guilty on Nov. 14 to exporting the carved elephant, a small elephant tusk, and a leather case made from python skin.

The company and its director, Dong Heon Kim, were fined a combined $12,500 and sentenced to two years’ probation. Their endangered animal goods ended up in Coote’s evidence room.