James Pomfret and Tom Kirkwood, Reuters 9 Nov 09;
GUANGZHOU/NAIROBI (Reuters) - Tucked into a grimy building in Guangzhou, a small band of Chinese master carvers chip away at ivory tusks with chisels, fashioning them into the sorts of intricate carvings that were prized by Chinese emperors.
A passion for ivory ornaments such as these is what helped decimate African and Asian elephant populations until a 1989 ban on ivory trade. Today, China's economic rise, and along with it a seemingly insatiable appetite for status symbols by its nouveau riche, has spurred demand for African ivory.
In remote pockets of Africa, such as the Tsavo East region in Kenya where giraffe wander lazily across tarmac freshly laid by Chinese laborers; and in teeming market towns on the banks of the Nile in Sudan where Chinese barter and buy ivory openly; the Chinese imprint is conspicuous and growing.
"The Chinese are all over Africa and are buying up ivory, worked and raw," said Esmond Martin, a conservationist who has closely tracked Chinese involvement in the black market ivory trade.
"The last time I was up in Khartoum or Omdurman I found that about 75 percent of all the ivory being sold was bought by Chinese," he added.
In a 2007 report, the U.N.-backed CITES, the global wildlife trade watchdog, said China faced a "major challenge" as it continues to be the "most important country globally as a destination for illicit ivory," exacerbated in part by China's spreading influence and ties in Africa.
Chinese nationals have been arrested and convicted for ivory smuggling in Africa and organized crime gangs are also involved in bringing large quantities of illicit ivory into China, according to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency.
In a controversial bid to stem illegal poaching, CITES allowed a 62-tonne batch of elephant tusks to be imported legally into China last year. The ivory stockpiles were bought by Chinese traders at auctions.
At the time, Allan Thornton, of the Environmental Investigation Agency, expressed concern the sale would fuel a massive appetite for ivory in China. "In a country of 1.3 billion people, demand for ivory from just a fraction of one per cent of the population is colossal," he told the Telegraph newspaper.
Ivory has been banned since 1989 after decades of poaching in which Africa's elephant population was halved with only around 600,000 remaining by 1997, according to conservation groups.
The CITES secretariat in Geneva noted a trend of long-time expatriate Chinese residents in Africa getting heavily involved in the trade, while quite a number of lower-level ivory couriers recently arrested have been mainland Chinese residents.
While most countries enforce the ban on ivory, in recent years China and Japan have been permitted to buy non-poached ivory from several African countries in a move aimed at raising money for wildlife conservation, and to smother demand for poached ivory with a steady flow of cheaper tusks.
"If the demand is supplied by legal origin ivory, then that should begin to close the doors for the criminals," said John Sellar, a senior enforcement officer for CITES in Geneva.
He added the two-decade long ivory ban had helped stabilize overall elephant numbers, with only scattered local populations under any real serious threat from poachers in countries such as Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While only around 4,000 wild tigers remain worldwide, he noted, in Botswana alone there are more than 130,000 wild elephants.
"The elephant as a species is no way in danger," he added.
GROWING DEMAND
Within China, officials who regulate the domestic ivory trade said there hasn't been a conspicuous increase in ivory consumption given tight laws and controls that restrict ivory sales and manufacturing to some 130 addresses nationwide.
Yet this year alone, an extra 37 stores were approved as new, official ivory retail outlets.
There have also been telling signs on the ground.
In Guangzhou's antiques market, numerous stalls were openly selling uncertified ivory from trinkets to large carved tusks.
"I can get you as much as you like," said one dealer with the surname Wu, who was asking 8000 yuan ($1,172) for a small carved ivory Buddha's head and a similar price for an elaborate fan.
"Come back later this afternoon," she added.
At another stall in the market, a small painted tusk was prominently displayed in a bustling alleyway.
"Guangzhou has especially close economic ties with Africa and there are tens of thousands of African (traders) there, so we cannot discount the possibility they are bringing ivory in," said Wan Ziming, the director of law enforcement and training at the CITES management authority of China.
"Guangzhou has become a hub for the smuggling of ivory," added Wan whose department which is under the Chinese government's State Forestry Administration.
CITES rejects claims by animal rights groups that controlled ivory sales worsen the illegal trade, instead saying poaching levels are more closely linked to governance problems and political instability in African regions.
But Professor Xu Hongfa, the China director of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, says enforcement needs to improve across China with evidence of contraband ivory seeping across China to places as far afield as Tibet.
A TRAFFIC researcher currently carrying out field investigations across China and who requested anonymity given the sensitive nature of her work, says the illegal ivory trade is now rife across China with contraband ivory at least a third cheaper than in official stores.
Meanwhile, after having been starved of fresh African ivory for years and scraping by on rare and price excavated mammoth tusks, Chinese carvers hope the recent availability of ivory will keep their ancient craft alive.
"This will help us survive," said 77-year-old Li Dingning who has watched Guangzhou's once booming ivory industry get whittled down to around 100 master carvers including himself.
"Only if you have the raw materials to work with, will people learn (to carve ivory). If not, then everyone will find other jobs," Li added.
Carvers are banking on more of China's affluent masses buying their wares which are seen as status symbols and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Before the 1990's you couldn't buy ivory within China. We used to only export our carvings," Li said, as he stood before a monumental ivory boat carved from a single massive tusk, with thousands of miniature figurines milling over multiple decks.
"But now it can be freely circulated so there are more people than ever who want to buy ivory carvings and products."
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
Crime rings boost ivory smuggling
Richard Black, BBC News 11 Nov 09;
The last year has seen a major increase in the illegal ivory trade, with more involvement from organised crime.
Figures compiled by Traffic, the agency charged with monitoring the trade, show a doubling in the volume of illegal ivory seized from 2008 to 2009.
Researchers believe most of it is poached in West and Central Africa, while China is the main destination.
Traffic says there is no evidence that last year's one-off legal sale of ivory in southern Africa boosted smuggling.
The volume of ivory seized is not a complete indication of the size of the illegal trade, because the effectiveness of police and customs authorities can vary from year to year and only a fraction of illegal consignments are discovered.
Nevertheless, Traffic believes a significant increase lies behind the seizure figures, especially because the final numbers for 2009 could rise even higher.
"Our analysis cuts off in August, and our figures are already showing the increase," said the agency's director Steven Broad.
"So it's a serious concern. And the increase is based on a relatively small number of big seizures, which tend to indicate more organised operations behind the trade," he told BBC News.
A year ago, an operation by Interpol and Kenyan authorities netted a tonne of ivory in a single consignment - the biggest on record - and led to the arrest of 57 people in five African countries.
Reports indicate that prices of $1,000 per kilo can now be commanded.
China question
Traffic believes that poaching and exporting is currently concentrated in West Africa.
Nigeria emerges as a country implicated in many seizures made elsewhere, but whose authorities have not themselves made a single seizure in 18 years.
As sources of ivory, Traffic also picks out Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo as countries of concern, while Thailand stands accused as a major trans-shipment point.
More than half of the consignments involving these countries are large ones, indicating the involvement of organised crime, Traffic says.
Tanzania emerges as a nation effective at controlling poaching in its own elephant herd, but which gangs are increasingly using to export ivory.
Traffic concludes that most of the illegal ivory ends up in China, although Vietnam is developing as a market.
Chinese connection
In recent years, China has stepped up monitoring and enforcement on ivory carvers and sellers, and its efforts were rewarded in July last year when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted to allow Chinese buyers into the legal sale of stockpiled ivory that was about to begin in southern Africa.
The sale permitted Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to sell more than 100 tonnes of ivory from government stockpiles.
Most of it came from animals that had died naturally, and the money raised was designated for elephant conservation.
Although not opposing the sale, Traffic believes Chinese authorities have further to go.
"The [Chinese] approach is to have very tightly controlled outlets selling the legal ivory, and there is a lot of detail - you can even check the legality on a public database when you go to buy something," said Mr Broad.
"But what effort has been put into suppressing the black market trade outside those controlled outlets? Based on what we have at the moment, we can't say they're failing; but it's a big question."
The Traffic report also highlights the increasing presence of Chinese citizens in African countries as a factor facilitating trade.
"Chinese nationals have been arrested within or coming from Africa in at least 134 ivory seizure cases, totalling over 16 tonnes of ivory; and another 487 cases representing almost 25 tonnes of ivory originating from Africa was seized en route to China," says the report.
"As ever, more than any other country, China seemingly holds the key for reversing the upward trend in illicit trade in ivory."
Poaching territories
It would be logical to suppose that if the volume of the ivory trade is increasing, that must be fed by a rise in the rate of poaching.
Although Kenya has documented a rise, information from other countries is scanty, and it is not clear whether the smuggling increase is affecting the viability of elephant populations.
On a pan-African basis, elephant numbers are increasing. But behind that overall trend lies a pattern of effective conservation and population increase in southern and eastern Africa, while numbers are low and believed to be falling in the centre and west of the continent.
Last year's legal ivory sale, authorised by CITES in 2007, remains controversial.
The previous one-off sale in 1999 was followed by four years of a decline in smuggling, apparently disproving the assertion made by some animal welfare organisations that a legal trade forms an opening into which black market ivory can pour.
This time, the data is unclear. Traffic is analysing evidence of elephant kills in Central Africa that might provide an answer; and until then, "We really can't tell - the jury is out," said Steven Broad.
Tanzania and Zambia are requesting the right to make a similar sale, again of more than 100 tonnes. The request is due to be decided at the next CITES meeting in March.
Traffic is supported jointly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and WWF, and is charged by CITES with monitoring the ivory trade through the Elephant Trade Information System (Etis).
Etis contains a 20-year record of 14,364 elephant product seizure records from 85 states.
