The story appears on

Page A6

March 30, 2017

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Ivory prices plummet as trade given notice

PRICES have dropped sharply since China announced plans to end the legal trade in ivory on the mainland later this year, a leading elephant conservation group said yesterday.

In recent years, the government has been taking steps to eliminate the trade in ivory, which is used for ornamentation and souvenirs. Now, the mainland’s ivory factories are to be shut down tomorrow, to be followed by the closing of retail outlets by the end of the year.

A report by the conservation group highlights the price of ivory in markets across China’s mainland between 2014 and earlier this year. It found the price dropped from US$2,100 per kilogram in early 2014 to US$730 in February.

Conservationists say tens of thousands of elephants have been killed in Africa in recent years as demand for ivory in Asia increased. Past estimates of Africa’s elephant population have ranged from 420,000 to 650,000. Some conservationists estimate that up to 20,000 elephants are killed by poachers every year to meet demand.

“This is a critical period for elephants,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, president and founder of Save the Elephants, which carried out the research.

“With the end of the legal ivory trade in China, the survival chances for elephants have distinctly improved. We must give credit to China for having done the right thing by closing the ivory trade. There is still a long way to go to end the excessive killing of elephants for ivory, but there is now greater hope for the species.”

Other factors behind the drop in prices include the economic slowdown resulting in fewer people being able to afford luxury goods, and a crackdown on corruption that has dissuaded businesspeople from buying expensive ivory items as “favors” for government officials, the report says.

“Findings from 2015 and 2016 in China have shown that the legal ivory trade especially has been severely diminished,” said Lucy Vigne, a researcher with Save The Elephants.

The Chinese mainland’s 130 licensed outlets have gradually been reducing the quantity of ivory items for sale, and have been cutting prices to improve sales, the report says.

In 2015, some of the main licensed outlets were closed at the time of the researchers’ visit due to slow sales. In other cases, vendors were replacing elephant ivory displays with mammoth ivory dug out of the Russian tundra.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend