UK wildlife law

What the 2026 Ivory Act amendment does to domestic trade

Updated 6 October 2026

The Wildlife and Countryside (Ivory Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, laid before Parliament on 1 October 2026 as SI 2026/942 and signed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, narrow rather than replace the 2018 Ivory Act. They tighten the musical instrument and portrait miniature exemptions, introduce a registration scheme for items containing worked ivory, and reopen Schedule 1 to add Loxodonta cyclotis, African forest elephant, alongside the L. africana and Elephas maximus already listed. The Explanatory Memorandum cites the African Elephant Action Plan 2024 to 2034, the CITES CoP20 decisions taken in Samarkand, and the National Wildlife Crime Unit assessment of June 2026.

What did the 2026 Ivory Act amendment actually change?

Three changes land in the same instrument. The musical instrument exemption, in force since the 2022 regulations, is no longer self certifying. A dealer, owner, or auction house moving an instrument containing ivory across a UK border or selling it must now apply to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) for an item certificate before the transaction closes, and the certificate is non transferable. The portrait miniature exemption, the most heavily used carve out under the original 2018 Act, is narrowed by a de minimis threshold: any portrait where ivory accounts for more than 10 per cent of the visible surface, measured by the conservator standard in the 2024 British Museum methodology, is no longer exempt. The third change is a worked ivory registration scheme, run by APHA and backed by a statutory register under section 10 of the 2018 Act, that requires owners of qualifying items to register before 30 June 2028. Items registered within that window can be sold, repaired, or restored; items not registered lose the narrow dealing exception they would otherwise have had.

Schedule 1 is reopened. The 2018 Act covered African elephant and Asian elephant, but the species definitions had been read, after the 2017 IUCN African elephant split assessment, to default to L. africana sensu stricto. The 2026 amendment inserts Loxodonta cyclotis by name and adds a transitional provision for items that could lawfully have been treated as African elephant under the 2018 Act, regardless of population, before the amendment came into force. That second change is the one the trade had been watching. It does not, on its own, legalise anything new. It does, however, make it harder to argue that an item made from central African ivory predates a control date that was never written for forest elephant in the first place.

Which species and items does the amendment quietly cover?

The 2018 Act operates by species. Anything containing ivory from a listed species is in scope unless it falls into an exemption. The 2026 amendment adds L. cyclotis, which means the registration scheme and the new de minimis threshold both apply to items that contain or may contain African forest elephant ivory. Mammoth ivory, Mastodon ivory, and any other proboscidean material not on Schedule 1 remain outside the Act. That distinction is important because it is the basis on which the antique exemption continues to work: an item must be both over 100 years old, less than 200 grams of ivory by weight, and from a listed species, with a 10 per cent ivory surface threshold for portrait miniatures introduced this October.

Hippopotamus ivory is not covered. Walrus ivory is not covered. Narwhal ivory is not covered. The amendment does not touch them, and the trade in those materials continues under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Enforcement) Regulations 2018 and the EU ivory regulation retained in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework. For items that are partly ivory and partly other materials, the test is now the surface measurement plus the weight test, not the weight test alone, and the regulator can require a sample for radiocarbon dating at the owner's expense where the date is genuinely in dispute.

What does the registration scheme require, and who has to register?

APHA will run the register, but the regulations are silent on the portal address and on the fee, with both expected in a parallel guidance note from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The statutory basis is section 10 of the 2018 Act, which permits the Secretary of State to maintain a register of exempt items, and the 2026 amendment inserts the worked ivory category as a registerable class. Owners of qualifying items do not need to register an item to keep it, display it, or pass it on by inheritance, but they do need to register before any sale, commercial loan, export, or restoration that involves a change of ownership. The transitional window runs from the date the regulations come into force, which the Explanatory Memorandum gives as 6 April 2027, to 30 June 2028.

Dealers and auction houses have a parallel obligation. From 6 April 2027 they must keep records of all exempt items they handle for at least five years, including the APHA certificate reference where one is required, the seller's name, and the buyer's name. Failure to keep records is a summary offence under section 11 of the 2018 Act, with the 2026 amendment lifting the maximum fine on summary conviction from the existing level to an unlimited fine, a change that the National Wildlife Crime Unit had asked for in its June 2026 submission.

How does this connect to CITES CoP20 in Samarkand?

Two CITES CoP20 decisions frame the amendment. Decision 19.171, adopted in November 2025 and reproduced in the 2026 amendment's explanatory text, called on Parties to align domestic controls on domestic trade in elephant ivory with the African Elephant Action Plan 2024 to 2034, which itself was negotiated in the run up to CoP20 and adopted in Samarkand. The UK had previously operated a stricter domestic regime than CITES requires, but the Action Plan goes further than the 2018 Act on worked items, particularly on traceability, and the registration scheme is the UK's answer to that pressure. Decision 19.174, the trade in ivory for commercial purposes, asked Parties to close loopholes on items of unknown origin, which is what the de minimis threshold and the radiocarbon sampling power are designed to do for portrait miniatures specifically.

Northern Ireland is treated separately under the Windsor Framework, with EU Regulation 338/97 and the EU ivory regulation continuing to apply, and the UK Government has committed to a common UK position through the Windsor Framework Interministerial Group. In practice, that means an item registered in England, Wales, or Scotland under the 2026 scheme can be moved into Northern Ireland only if it meets the EU regime, and an item registered in Northern Ireland cannot be relied on as an exempt item in Great Britain if the species is covered and the registration is not in the UK GB register.

What did the explanatory memorandum actually say?

The Explanatory Memorandum to SI 2026/942 is short and unusually candid. It acknowledges that the 2018 Act's species definitions were drafted before the 2017 IUCN split, and that the 2022 musical instrument regulations created an administrative category that has been difficult to police. The Memorandum cites the National Wildlife Crime Unit's 2025/2026 threat assessment, which had flagged portrait miniatures as the highest volume category of potentially unlawful trade, and cites Operation Avocet, the Metropolitan Police led investigation concluded in March 2026, as evidence that self certification is not working. The Memorandum also notes, in the small print, that the registration scheme is intended to be cost neutral by 2030, with fees on certificates set at a level that recovers the running cost of the APHA team.

The Memorandum is less clear on mammoth ivory, which is not a listed species under either the 2018 Act or the 2026 amendment, but which has become a substitute material as the market for elephant ivory has tightened. A footnote acknowledges that the Department is monitoring the market and may bring forward a separate instrument if the volume of mammoth ivory trade increases to a point where it materially undermines the elephant controls. That footnote is the line the trade will be watching.

What is not in the amendment?

The amendment does not change the antique exemption, does not change the 200 gram weight threshold for antiques, does not change the rules for museums, and does not change the position on items made before 1947 that have only minimal ivory content. It does not introduce a sales ban, which the 2018 Act already operates through the dealing offence, and it does not change the criminal law. It also does not create a new criminal offence: the registration scheme sits on top of the existing offences in sections 7, 8, and 11 of the 2018 Act, and a failure to register is enforced through refusal of a dealing certificate, not through prosecution.

What the amendment does not do is also what the trade will be looking for in the next instrument. The Department has signalled that a second statutory instrument, focused on online sales and on the role of platforms, is in preparation, but it was not laid alongside SI 2026/942. For now, the October 2026 instrument is the operative text, the registration scheme is the practical change, and the addition of L. cyclotis is the conservation relevant change.

Sources and what to read first

Start with the instrument itself. The Wildlife and Countryside (Ivory Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/942, was laid on 1 October 2026 and is published on legislation.gov.uk, with the Explanatory Memorandum as a separate document. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a parallel guidance note on the same day. The African Elephant Action Plan 2024 to 2034 is on the CITES documents portal, as are Decisions 19.171 and 19.174 from CoP20 in Samarkand. The National Wildlife Crime Unit's threat assessment for 2025/2026 is the underlying operational document, and the British Museum's 2024 methodology for surface measurement of portrait miniatures is the technical reference for the de minimis threshold. For a plain language summary, the World Wildlife Fund UK briefing of 2 October 2026 is the clearest short read, and the Environmental Investigations Agency note of 3 October 2026 is the clearest critical read.