A boy examines an ivory carving at a store in Beijing. The Chinese government has announced its intent to shut down its domestic legal ivory market, but as a new report shows, the industry may have a future life of its own. Photograph by Gilles Sabrie, The New York times/Redux.
China is the world's largest ivory consumer, with its legal market often providing cover for illegal ivory. The intertwining of these two markets--legal and illegal--is the subject of a new report by Elephant Action League, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting wildlife crime.
The country has a legal ivory stockpile of about 40 metric tons that, based on annual drawdowns by government-licensed businesses, has a lifespan of likely under eight years. Illegal stocks are reportedly 25 times greater.
The report, Blending Ivory: China's Old Loopholes, New Hopes, details a ten-month undercover investigation that exposes multiple mechanisms used by legal businesses to launder illegal ivory into China's legal market.
It presents seven insights that illustrate the challenges of shutting down the market while at the same time raising hopes for success.
- Astute companies in the legal ivory business have figured out how to use proxies to circumvent the law. For example, Beijing Mammoth Art Co., Ltd. established a subsidiary company, to import the ivory, work it, and re-export it to the parent company in Beijing. "Through this transaction process, everything is legal," the head of Beijing Mammoth--referred to in the report as Beijing Trader 2--told investigators. (While the report authors omitted the names of individual targets, they've submitted this information to Chinese and Hong Kong authorities.)
While that's a positive development, others are betting on a rosy future for ivory. The investigation found that investors and traders have stockpiled 1,000 metric tons of illegal ivory in secret locations. The government will have to figure out how to remove all this if an ivory ban is to be feasible.
This is an excerpt of an article on National Geographic titled "Why Shutting Down China's Ivory Trade Won't Be Easy" and was published with permission. For full article, please click here.
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