BANGKOK: A wildlife trade regulator said black market prices on ivory have drastically fallen globally, suggesting that international efforts to crack down on the illegal trade are having an impact.
John Scanlong, head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), told the Agence France-Presse at a conference, “we’re seeing the price of ivory start to tank,” adding “you’re seeing the bottom fall out of the market.”
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Carved ivory is shown to the media before being destroyed in Beijing on May 29, 2015. China destroyed more than six hundred kilograms of ivory in front of media and diplomats, as it seeks to shed its image as a global trading hub for illegal elephant tusks.
Watchdog agencies say organized crime networks and militant rebel groups use the sale of ivory to fund their operations, with the smuggled goods largely making their way to Asia, where their use in decorations and traditional “medicine” fuel the multi-billion-dollar market.
The ivory trade has been banned in most of the world since 1989, after that the African elephant population had dropped from millions in the mid-1900s to only around 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.
A report by Kenya-based conservation group Save the Elephants showed that over an 18-month time frame, the price of ivory in China had been cut in half, $1,100 per kilo, down from $2,100 in 2014, an all-time high.
