Antiques Roadshow: Keep Those Ivory Tusks At Home Because We Don’t Want To See’em

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Rest easy, guy. (nids2012)

Bring PBS your piles of old buttons, your post-colonial mid-modern anti-establishment furniture (which could totally be a thing) and all the faded baseball cards you want. But Antiques Roadshow wants nothing to do with any ivory tusks, and will not perform any more appraisals of those items, the show announced this week.

Ivory has long been a contentious item, especially when it’s still in elephant tusk form, and as such, PBS says the show won’t show any tusks in new episodes or in segments it uses from older shows, reports the Associated Press.

The Wildlife Conservation Society sees this as a big win for elephants, saying the decision to ensure ivory tusks and their “assumed monetary value” aren’t glorified on TV.

lauded the decision as an important step in ensuring elephant ivory tusks and their “assumed monetary value” are not glorified on TV.

But if you’ve got other items that happen to include bits of ivory, like a piano or decorative objects, those will still be appraised on the show in an attempt to inform viewers about ivory and “the larger issues at hand.”

PBS: Ivory Tusks Are off ‘Antiques Roadshow’ [Associated Press]

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