Thailand’s ivory trade crackdown is working

BANGKOK — Efforts by Thailand’s government to curb sales of ivory have been successful, following criticism of widespread trafficking in the country, police say.

Police announced last week that since January, officials have seized two elephant tusks and 422 tusk fragments in a single case, while in all of last year they seized 99 tusks and 22 tusk fragments in multiple cases.

Deputy Police Commissioner Gen. Chalermkiat Sriworakhan said the drop in the number of cases showed that strict enforcement had deterred traffickers.

“We have made serious efforts to block elephant ivory from being smuggled into the country and sent on to another country,” Chalermkiat said. Now, “if they do get in the country, we do not let them leave,” he said.

“If we are able to block ivory from being smuggled out of the country, then we will destroy it,” he said. “We have been able to effectively arrest more and more suspects with tangible results.”

Thailand had been considered to have the largest unregulated ivory market and had been threatened with sanctions on the trade of protected wildlife species, but it introduced new laws in 2014 and 2015.

The Elephant Ivory Act regulates the domestic ivory market and criminalizes the sale of African elephant ivory. The wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC praised Thailand for a large drop in sales of ivory items resulting from the crackdown.