China takes the fight to ivory smugglers while elephant herds shrink

China has long been blamed by international community for increasing poaching of wild elephants in Africa, because of its growing ivory consumption. Animal protection groups say a growing demand in the Chinese market for ivory has caused poaching and smuggling, while the Chinese authorities argue that the government long fought hard against illegal ivory trading.

Before Resson Kantai, a project officer at Save the Elephants (STE) came to China, she thought she would see people on the streets wearing earrings or necklaces made of ivory. But she was surprised when people she talked to responded in confusion, "What does this have to do with me? I've never even seen ivory before; I don't know what you're talking about."

Her confusion was perhaps understandable for someone who had never been to China; the founder of the Kenya-based NGO, Ian Douglas, repeatedly said that even though China is on the other side of the planet, it controls the future of African elephants.

Although China came late to the ivory market, after countries like Great Britain, the US and Japan, as of late demand from those places has dried up. This has made China the center of attention for many animal protection organizations, who say the legal status of ivory market in China is protection for illegal trade.

But Chinese authorities don't agree with these allegations. Meng Xianlin, the executive director general of China's Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Import and Export Management Office, told the media in 2013 that the increase in elephant poaching can't be blamed entirely on the need of the Chinese market, but is due to a variety of reasons.

Disappearing elephants

Kantai came to China in June, with Chris Kiarie, the China contact for Kenya-based NGO Wildlife Direct. Together they visited a legal ivory trade market. When one of the shop owners found out Kiarie speaks Chinese, he showed him a photo of one piece of ivory sold for 10,000 yuan ($1,632.52).

The shop owner was even happier when he found out Kiarie was from Kenya, Kiarie told the Phoenix Weekly. He showed Kiarie another photo, of two Kenyan business partners who were poachers or illegal traders.

Kiarie didn't recognize these people in the photos, but he has seen many poachers and illegal traders in local courts in Kenya, he told the Phoenix Weekly. Some people have even said to him, "We have lots of elephants, killing a couple won't matter."

But in reality, the death rate of African elephants from poaching has surpassed the natural growth rate of the elephant population. According to a report released by the CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Secretariat on June 13, the number of poached elephants started to increase drastically in 2005.

In the past three years, an average of 20,000 elephants were poached every year. Researchers believe over 10 million elephants lived in Africa at the beginning of the last century. The number decreased to about 1.2 million by 1980. Now there are less than 500,000.

As elephant herds in central Africa thinned out, poachers turned east and south to satisfy growing demand. In recent years, even countries such as Botswana, which devotes significant funding to wildlife protection, had reports of poaching, while Cape Town became a hotspot for ivory trading.

"The new wave of elephant slaughter is more severe than the crisis in the 1970s and the 1980s," Douglas told the Phoenix Weekly. He conducted research on the living conditions of African elephants in the 1970s and was the first to warn the world about the severity of elephant poaching.

Rise of the Chinese market

From 1850 to 1910, London was the world's trading center for ivory. The US became the center of ivory consumption at the beginning of the 20th century, while Japan dominated the market from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The international community banned the international commercial trade of ivory in 1989. But in 2007, Japan and China were granted the right by CITES to a one-time purchase of ivory from Africa. Japan was allowed to buy 40 tons, while China was granted 62 tons.

In media interviews, Meng has said that, following the one-time purchase, China did not completely ban buying and selling of ivory domestically, but rather has set the limit on the amount of legal consumption at six tons per year.

Zhang Li, a member of the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants group under CITES and an associate professor at the College of Life Sciences at the Beijing Normal University, told the Phoenix Weekly that since 2007, the number of ivory processing factories in China has increased from 9 to 37, while the number of locations where ivory is sold has increased from 31 to 150.

"But the amount [from the one-time purchase] isn't enough for all these factories and shops. There's a big market and not enough legal ivory, which has stimulated ivory smuggling, especially smuggling into China," Zhang said.