Instead, the sales led to an increase in demand and, consequently, an increase in elephant poaching. The problem has not faded away. Most recently the two African elephant species savanna and forest were declared endangered and critically endangered due to their continued poaching threat. Still, some African nations look fondly at the sale and have long hoped to repeat it.
The proposal was not accepted by the parties. The one-off sales of ivory removed the stigma associated with its purchase, stimulated the market demand, and increased prices.
This meant that the bulk of the profits went to filling Chinese government coffers — not to African nations — and in doing so, created a large illegal market which drove prices even higher.
The market had been stimulated, prices increased and the volume of legal ivory available was insufficient to meet demand as the Chinese government gradually fed its stockpile into the market. Japan, the other participant in the one-off sales, has systematically failed to comply with CITES regulations, meaning that there were and still are no controls over ivory being sold, allowing the illegal markets to function in parallel to the legal one.
With no recent legal international sales, combined with the significant U. Ivory sourced in Africa and sold in Asia has additional costs such as transportation, taxes and broker commissions.
Those numbers pale in comparison to a living elephant. One half-truth is that the money earned from the legal sale will be used to effectively fund conservation. Sellers are misrepresenting the materials used in certain items and sometimes using "code words" to disguise illicit listings, researchers from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, in England, said in a statement on Monday.
In , eBay announced it was introducing a global ban on the sale of ivory starting on January 1, He said detecting illegal sales of ivory items can be difficult, as the word "ivory" can be used to describe a color. But "companies like eBay have the resources and data" that could be mobilized to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, Roberts added. Read More. But Roberts told CNN Business that he would like to see independent verification of the listings data, adding that he and other researchers have had limited success in getting illicit listings taken down using eBay's report function.
Roberts and fellow researcher Sofia Venturini found that some descriptions of netsuke — carved objects which are often made of elephant ivory and attached to Japanese kimonos — are misrepresenting the items. Some African countries want to tackle a wildlife taboo.
Whether to start selling ivory again. Modestly trained and equipped African rangers are facing very sophisticated poaching gangs that are armed to the teeth with assault rifles and equipped with aircraft, satellite telephones, GPS units, and other sophisticated gadgets. It is unfair, and absolutely unreasonable, to expect developing countries in Africa to have the resources needed to contend with criminal abuses that are fueled by very dynamic and wealthy markets of Asia.
Someone needs to start talking to the Asian nations. The media has been flooded with articles reporting ivory seizures in Asia over the past couple of years. But there have been no reports of any kingpins being arrested, or any syndicates broken. Nor have there been reports of stockpiles being seized or factories being shut down. Yet these stockpiles and factories must exist. With hundreds of tons of ivory being smuggled into Asia annually, the stuff must be somewhere.
With carved ivory available in retail shops in virtually every Asian city, there must be ample carving factories working hard to produce a flood of contraband finished products. We could use other products in our exercise—anything from bracelets to fancy carvings. And those expensive items certainly would drive our price estimates higher.
But the signature seal business is a fairly typical example and serves as a good baseline estimate. The signature seal is a very common product that many Asians use in their daily lives. They are used in place of a handwritten signature on a check, and on all sorts of other documents, from bank loans to taxi receipts. Any place an American would write a signature, many Asians would use their personal signature seals. Certainly, most Asians use signature seals made of plastic, or wood, or carved stone, or some other material.
But some see ivory as being more fashionable or prestigious. About 30 signature seals with total weight grams can be fashioned from one kilogram of raw ivory estimating about 10 percent wastage during the carving process. There are at least metric tons in annual trade. And they do. All of this money finances the most horrific crimes. It is the money that purchases the AKs and G3s and even M16s used to kill elephants and any rangers who get in the way.
It is the money used to pay smugglers and middlemen. It is the money used to corrupt officials and bribe freight forwarding agents. It is the money used to pay the LRA, Janjaweed and others in exchange for ivory so they can continue with their genocides and child soldier recruitments and abductions. The United States needs to talk with Asian nations about matters such as targeting the big dealers, their factories, and distribution systems. They need to discuss money laundering.
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