The ivory trade has been in the news quite a bit recently last week China banned all imports of Ivory carvings for one year. China have a very large demand for Ivory which is wiping out the African elephant population. Thiland has until last month to take measures to shut down domestic trade or it will face trade sanctions. Thilands ivory market is the largest unregulated market in the world and trade is largely fuelled by ivory from poached African elephants which are smuggeled into the country.
22,000 African elephants were estimated to be killed by poachers for their ivory in 2012. Most of that is happening in Central Africa where poaching rates are twice the continental average.
Every year, tens of thousands of elephants are brutally killed for their ivory. Between 2008 and 2013, the estimated death toll ranged between 30,000 and 50,000 elephants per year. The slaughter is horrifying; ivory dealers employ and arm poachers, who in turn target entire herds of elephants, shooting them with automatic weapons and hacking off their tusks with axes and chainsaws.
These tusks are fed into the illegal international ivory trade which is controlled by highly organised criminal syndicates. This trade feeds demand for ivory products in Asia, Europe, USA and elsewhere, which continues to bankroll elephants’ destruction. Legal international sales of ivory in 1999 and 2008 added to the demand but also caused confusion among consumers (‘is ivory legal or not?’) and provided an avenue for criminals to launder illegal ivory into the black-market.
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