New Report Shows Soaring Demand for Ivory in China
A report into the scale of China’s ivory trade has just been published, and the researchers’ findings are startling. Renowned wildlife trade experts Esmond Martin and Lucy Vigne spent a fortnight in January surveying the important ivory centres of Guangzhou and Fuzhou in southern China. They found that demand for ivory had soared since Esmond was last there in 2004. Despite the Chinese government introducing stringent measures to control the trade in ivory, these are not being enforced and large quantities of illegal elephant ivory are being sold. It has been known for some time that China has become the biggest importer of ivory in the world, and illegal consignments bound for China are regularly seized by enforcement authorities. But Esmond and Lucy’s research provides evidence that much more is still getting through. Theirs was the first ever attempt to quantify it, with funding from Elephant Family, The Aspinall Foundation and Columbus Zoo. With thousands of African elephants and 300-400 endangered Asian elephants being slaughtered for their tusks every year, the true scale of the ivory trade and the easy availability of illegal elephant ivory in China will alarm conservationists.
The growth of China’s economy has created an increasingly wealthy population, and this has rapidly fuelled demand for ivory. Legal elephant ivory from old privately-owned stocks and government supplies can only be sold in specific registered shops. These must display that they are permitted to sell elephant ivory, and all items must have an ID card displayed alongside, which has to include a photo if the item is over 50g. Items lacking such authentication are therefore illegal and the new items are presumed to come from tusks smuggled into the country. The measures gained China ‘buyer approval’ status from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which permitted the legal import of 62 tonnes of elephant ivory to China in 2008. This rapidly increased the supply of ivory, but the impact it had on the markets was largely unknown until now.
Only eight of the 80 outlets that Esmond and Lucy visited in Guangzhou displayed the compulsory ID cards; 6,437 ivory items were counted, of which 3,947 (61%) lacked ID cards. This number of ivory items for sale in Guangzhou had increased by 50% since Esmond last surveyed the market in 2004. Demand for ivory was less in Fuzhou, but none of the 282 items for sale in 39 outlets had ID cards. Retailers were generally unconcerned that their ivory was illegal and made no attempt to hide it.
The trade in ivory is highly lucrative: privately-owned raw ivory costs $750/kg and finished products can cost anything from about $455 for a pair of chopsticks, up to almost $40,000 for a large 60cm human figurine, for example.
Confounding the matter is the increasing availability of ivory from the woolly mammoth, which as an extinct species is exempt from CITES, and therefore legal. Esmond and Lucy found 6,541 mammoth ivory items for sale in Guangzhou; a 100% increase since 2004. Mammoth ivory has received favourable publicity as a substitute for elephant ivory in China, and pieces often retain some of the brown outer layer, and have cracks and stains making them easily identifiable. However, grade-A mammoth tusks produce white blemish-free items that resemble elephant ivory. Where the two are sold together it is possible to pass off illegal elephant ivory as mammoth, and their report recommends that the two must be sold separately to avoid this. (In the photo above the piece on the left is mammoth ivory, and the piece on the right is elephant.) While some argue that mammoth ivory should be encouraged as an “ethical” alternative to elephant ivory, a recent survey conducted by Elephant Family found that more than nine out of ten of its followers believe that legal ivory substitutes should not be encouraged, as this just fuels the demand for ivory.
In March last year Elephant Family praised the decision taken to turn down requests from the Tanzanian and Zambian governments for a one-off legal sale of stockpiled ivory that had resulted from confiscations and natural deaths. The decision was taken at the CITES conference in Qatar amid fears that such a sale would also exacerbate poaching and the trade in illegal ivory.
Next week the CITES Standing Committee will be meeting in Geneva, and the debate around allowing further one-off legal sales of confiscated ivory is sure to be reignited. Esmond and Lucy’s report will strengthen the argument against any such sales to China. Meanwhile, as they point out, “if Chinese officials and traders can tighten their controls and law enforcement, they can reduce the illegal ivory trade in China.”
Read here for more information and download the full report
written by Dan Bucknell on 12th August 11
