Illegal ivory trade is rampant in China: it will be discussed this week at the CITES conference

    Illegal ivory trade is rampant in China: it will be discussed this week at the CITES conference

    Despite the bans, the illegal ivory trade is growing in China.

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    Once again we talk about the China for a negative record: the Asian country is in fact first in the world for illegal ivory trade, according to what emerges from an investigation by the NGO Elephant Family presented shortly before the meeting, to be held this week, of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the international body created to protect wildlife from exploitation.





    From the data, published in the journal Ecologist, it is clear that the fashion for objects in China is rampant ivory, with a request so vast that the two major elephant species - the Asian and the African - are included in the IUCN (World Union for Conservation of Nature) red list, the first indicated as endangered and the second as vulnerable.

    Despite a ban on international sales issued by CITES in 1989, in fact, in China some types of ivory are still considered legal, such as the ancient one, the one already carved, the mammoth one and the one included in one of the two "one-off" CITES certificates, which authorized its trade in 1999 and 2008. These types of ivory should be accompanied by certificates and documentation but in reality, the report reads, 61% of the nearly 6.500 objects investigated in Guangzhou city (in southern China) it was found illegal, without sales certificates or made with mammoth ivory mixed with elephant ivory. Furthermore, the suppliers interviewed also openly declared the illegal origin of their ivory, confirming the total absence of controls and sanctions.

    Illegal ivory, he explains Esmond Martin co-author of the report, largely comes from smuggling to Africa, where the almost non-existent internal demand is offset by exports. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), there were a record number of seizures of illegal ivory smuggled into East Asia in 2009, a trend that has continued over the past two years and is feared to get worse. For this reason, the decisions that will be taken during the CITES conference to be held in Geneva this week will become fundamental, and which hopefully will be oriented towards a strict policy of control of this ancient and harmful illegal trade.



     

    Eleonora Cresci

    add a comment of Illegal ivory trade is rampant in China: it will be discussed this week at the CITES conference
    Comment sent successfully! We will review it in the next few hours.