[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/EW-08-22-14-Price-of-Ivory.mp3|titles=EW 08-22-14 Price of Ivory]
The demand for ivory in Asia is reaching epic proportions, fueling organized crime and threatening the future of the African elephant.
China is the world’s largest ivory market. Demand is so high that the price of ivory has tripled in the last four years. In 2010, a kilogram of raw ivory went for $750; now, it commands $2,100. The ivory market is also out of control in Thailand – with the amount of ivory items for sale in Bangkok nearly tripling in the past year alone.
Transnational organized crime groups are believed to be responsible for much of the trafficking, and poaching profits are used to fund insurgencies and other illegal activity.
Beyond the criminal implications, this is devastating news for the future of the African elephant, a species that is already threatened. Despite a global ban on ivory sales since 1990, tens of thousands of African elephants are still killed each year for their tusks.
The conservation group Save the Elephants estimates that between 2010 and 2012 some 33,000 elephants were killed each year by poachers. Just this June, Satao, one of Kenya’s largest and most famous elephants, fell victim to the insatiable demand for ivory.
In 2013, the then-Prime Minister of Thailand vowed to end the domestic ivory trade. This has not happened— in fact the opposite has occurred. The market for ivory is booming throughout Southeast Asia, and global action is desperately needed if we are to protect the African elephant from extinction.
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Web Links
Price of ivory in China triples
Market surveys find disturbing increase in Thai ivory market
Poachers kill one of the world’s largest elephants in Kenya
Photo, posted November 13,2013, courtesy of USFWS Mountain-Prairie via Flickr.
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Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio, with script contribution from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.