Hope for elephants as ivory prices fall by two- thirds: conservationists

The price of ivory has fallen by nearly two- thirds in the last three years, according to research conducted in China and published Wednesday by the conservation group Save the Elephants.

At its peak in 2014 the estimated wholesale price for raw ivory stood at $ 2,100 per kilogram on the Chinese black market, but by early 2017 the price had fallen to $ 730 per kilogram, according to the report by two ivory trade experts, Esmond Martin and Lucy Vigne.

“This is good news, but poaching continues,” said Martin.

Chinese demand has driven a decadelong spike in elephant poaching in Af- rica, where the population has fallen by 110,000 over the last 10 years to just 415,000, according to a recent continental survey.

Vigne said both the amount of ivory for sale as well as prices had also fallen at 130 licensed outlets in China, reflecting a drop in demand in the Chinese market.

The researchers said China’s economic slowdown, plus a crackdown on corruption which sharply reduced the giving of ivory trinkets as gifts to officials, had also crimped demand, alongside a growing awareness of the catastrophic consequences of the ivory trade for elephants.

In the past, said Save the Elephants founder Iain Douglas- Hamilton, “few Chinese associated ivory products with elephant death,” but a series of campaigns had helped inform the public.

At the end of this month, China’s 34 remaining licensed ivory- carving factories will be closed and at the end of the year the last retail outlets will also close, following a recent government order putting an end to the legal trade in the country.

But it remains unclear how the closing of the legal market will affect the illegal trade in elephant ivory and the poaching it drives.

International trade in ivory was banned in 1989, yet poaching continued and accelerated in recent years, feeding a black market fueled by corruption and controlled by criminal gangs.

The researchers said that as China’s legal ivory market has contracted, illegal markets in Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have boomed.