Ivory price surge fuels slaughter of elephants

The price of ivory taken from elephants slaughtered in Tanzania and other African countries for their tusks has tripled in the past four years in China, the world’s biggest market, according to conservationists.

“The surge in the price of ivory is driving a wave of killing of elephants across Africa that shows little sign of abating,” campaign group Save the Elephants says in a new report.

“With the ivory price in Africa a tenth of that reached in China, substantial profits are being generated for organised crime that fuels insecurity, corruption, and deprives local communities of valuable income.”

Researchers from the Kenya-based group studying ivory sales in China said prices had risen for raw ivory from $750 (550 euros) per kilo in 2010 to $2,100 (1,540 euros) in 2014.

Prices were taken from retail outlets and factories in Beijing and Shanghai.

Wildlife group TRAFFIC has warned that Thailand’s ivory market was “out of control” and that the number of ivory products on sale in Bangkok had nearly trebled in the past year. Save the Elephants estimates an average of 33,000 elephants were lost to poachers every year between 2010 and 2012.

“Without concerted international action to reduce the demand for ivory, measures to reduce the killing of elephants for ivory will fail,” said Mr Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants.

“Although half a world away, China holds the key to the future of the African elephant.”

The group has also tracked ivory sales within Africa, discovering that Lagos in Nigeria, followed by Luanda in Angola, has the largest numbers of ivory trinkets on open sale.

Organised crime syndicates and rebel militia increasingly use poaching to fund insurgencies, reaping the benefits of multi-billion-dollar demand for ivory in China.

TRAFFIC said Thailand’s ivory market is driving Africa’s elephant poaching crisis, and accused the kingdom of backsliding on its pledges.

The number of ivory products on sale in Bangkok nearly trebled from 5,865 in January last year to 14,512 in May 2014, according to the wildlife group TRAFFIC.

The Southeast Asian nation, a known hub for the illegal trade in tusks from Africa, has come under pressure to ban the sale of ivory from domestic elephants.

This legal trade is blamed for easing the smuggling of ivory into Thailand from other countries, most of which is made into ornaments or taken to China and Vietnam where tusks are used in traditional medicine.

TRAFFIC said in a report that the amount of ivory on sale in Bangkok could not have come from Thai elephants alone.

“Thailand’s efforts to regulate local ivory markets have failed... their nation’s ivory markets continue to be out of control and fuel the current African elephant poaching crisis,” said TRAFFIC’s Naomi Doak.

The number of shops selling ivory products in Bangkok also rose from 61 to 105 between January and December last year, the group said, with Doak estimating that up to 80 per cent of the ivory in Bangkok was sourced from outside Thailand.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has warned of industrial-scale poaching to meet demand for ivory in Thailand and China, with more than 20,000 African elephants poached in 2013 alone for their tusks.

Thailand agreed to implement an action plan to tackle the problem during a CITES meeting in Bangkok last year, including better regulation of ivory sellers and adding African elephants to its list of protected species.

But Doak said the timeline for the plan was too long. She called on Thai authorities to suspend domestic sales of ivory until “enforcement agencies are given the power to effectively enforce the law”.

Theerapat Prayurasiddhi, deputy director general of Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, said the kingdom was trying to control the trade, adding that conservationists should also focus on where the illegal trade originates.

Additional reporting by AFP