Prince William’s smashingly bad idea

You’d think someone whose very life and livelihood are all about history would be a little more mindful of it – even the bad bits.

Of all people, Prince William, the heir presumptive to the British throne, should know something about the dangers of forgetting history, accidentally or deliberately.

And yet, in his passion for the deeply, harrowingly important cause of ending the killing of animals for the ivory trade, he wants to get rid of the evidence of the crimes he wishes to expose.

HRH the Duke of Cambridge told primatologist Jane Goodall that he would like to smash every one of the 1,200 ivory objects in Buckingham Palace. (William’s father, the Prince of Wales, has already moved out of sight all the ivory objets in his own homes.)

Protecting elephants and other ivory-bearing species like rhinos has become an ardent cause for the prince, one acquired over many trips to Africa, visiting nations once part of the British empire.

Over more than a century, a throne, cups, statuettes, carved tusks, sword hilts and fans were sent as tribute to the royals. Millions more tons found their way to the west as billiard balls, piano keys, chess pieces, cigarette holders. If the blood of the slaughtered animals were visible on the objects they were killed for, these items would be red, not white.

But is destroying them going to do any good?

Smashing these antique objects walks us down a dangerous path. It won’t erase the harm that was done – but it will erase the knowledge and memory of it.

We didn’t destroy the evidence of the Holocaust; we built museums and stocked them with the armbands and photographs and evidence of the atrocities, to make sure no one could ever think it hadn’t happened, or could get away with making it to happen again.

We didn’t destroy the evidence of slavery; we built museums and stocked them with manacles and the bills of sale for human beings, to make sure no one could think it hadn’t happened, or get away with making it happen again.

It’s one thing for nations to destroy stockpiles of poached ivory tusks, as Tanzania plans to, as the United States and Hong Kong – a former British crown colony – have already done. Put the poachers in prison, destroy the fruits of their bloody labors to make it clear there is zero tolerance and zero profit.

Prince William, unlike his forebears, has no such powers. But his name and rank and star power give him a different opportunity.

Put those ivory items on display in Buckingham Palace and open the exhibition to the paying public on a separate tour from the limited ones now available when the queen is not in residence.

People who can’t find Tanzania on a map will mob the exhibition just to get another glimpse inside Buckingham Palace.

Accompany each ivory artifact with a text, a video, of where it came from, and how it got there. Vintage photos and modern footage of elephant slaughters and rhino massacres in Africa or in India, in Africa and India. Naturalists’ accounts and videos of how these sensitive, wise creatures suffer, and mourn their dead. Don’t spare the gore, because that’s what this is all about – murdering the magnificent to cater to the vain and trivial.

People who are clueless will get an eyeful and an education (one Chinese woman told an NPR reporter that she thought elephant tusks just fell out, like old teeth).

Whatever their motivation, they’ll pay the price of admission. And Prince William can use the proceeds to fund an intense elephant and rhino protection program – maybe teams of pachyderm bodyguards, like the royal protection service that guards him.

However HRH chooses to use the money, this approach will be a far more powerful force for ending the ivory trade than a pile of ivory splinters carted away in the Buckingham Palace trash.

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Follow Patt Morrison on Twitter @pattmlatimes