Ivory trade
[5] World wars and the subsequent economic depressions caused a lull in this luxury commodity, but increased prosperity in the 1960s and early 1970s saw a resurgence.
Japan, relieved from its exchange restrictions imposed after World War II, started to buy up raw (unworked) ivory.
This started to put pressure on the forest elephants of Africa and Asia, both of which were used to supply the hard ivory preferred by the Japanese for the production of hanko, name seal stamps used like a signature.
Most[citation needed] encounters between CITES officials and local bands of poachers erupted in violent struggle, killing men and women on each side.
[7][10] Further failures of this "control" system were uncovered by the EIA when they gained undercover access and filmed ivory carving factories run by Hong Kong traders, including Poon, in the United Arab Emirates.
[7][10] Despite these public revelations by the EIA, and followed by media exposures (including ITV's The Cook Report) and appeals from African countries and a range of well-respected organisations around the world, WWF only came out in support of a ban in mid-1989, indicating the importance of the "lethal use" principle of wildlife to WWF and CITES; even then, the group attempted to water down decisions at the October 1989 meeting of CITES.
[7] Tanzania, attempting to break down the ivory syndicates that it recognized were corrupting its society, proposed an Appendix One listing for the African Elephant (effectively a ban on international trade).
It has been reported that it was not simply the act of the Appendix One listing and various national bans associated with it, but the enormous publicity surrounding the issue prior to the decision and afterwards, that created a widely accepted perception that the trade was harmful and now illegal.
Conservationists and biologists hailed Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) as a template for community empowerment in conservation.
The debate is further complicated by the many academic and policy disciplines at play, including biology, census techniques, economics, international trade dynamics, conflict resolution, and criminology—all reported to CITES delegates representing over 170 countries.
In an appeal to overcome national interests, a group of eminent elephant scientists responded with an open letter in 2002 which clearly explained the effects of the ivory trade on other countries.
They finished their appeal by describing the poaching crisis of the 1980s, and emphasized that the decision to ban ivory was not made to punish southern African countries, but to save the elephants in the rest of the world.
The effect of the sale of ivory to Japan in 2000 was hotly debated with Traffic, the organization which compiled the ETIS and MIKE databases, claiming they could not determine any link.
Esmond Martin has said, When the exchange restrictions imposed upon Japan after the Second World War were lifted during the late 1960s, it began importing huge amounts of raw ivory.
Martin said that Chinese carvers mainly sold ivory products to neighbors in the 1990s and not to internal buyers in China: These were supplying shops selling trinkets to tourists and businessmen from Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia, where the anti-ivory culture wasn't so strong, They were also exporting worked ivory wholesale to neighbouring countries.
Born Free Foundation CEO Will Travers said that, Even if we managed to close down all the unregulated markets around the world, there would still be a demand for illegal ivory coming from countries such as China and Japan.
[55] Based on these findings, the study authors recommended action to both reduce demand for ivory in China and other main markets and to decrease corruption and poverty in Africa.
[56][57] At the 2014 Tokyo Conference on Combating Wildlife crime, United Nations University and ESRI presented the first case of evidence-based policy-making maps on enforcement and compliance of CITES convention where illegal ivory seizures were mapped out along with poaching incidences[58][59] The ivory trade has steadily been a reoccurring problem that dwindled down the population of the African elephants and the white rhino.
[65] A 101 East report named Hong Kong as "one of the biggest ivory laundering centres in the world [where] legitimate operations are used to mask a far more sinister, more lucrative business".
[66] 95 kilograms (209 lb) of elephant ivory was confiscated at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris from two Vietnamese who were arrested by French customs.
[79] The sale of ivory is done openly, including at San Jiang Market, in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, and in Luang Prabang Province.
[79][80] In 2018, a study by Avaaz sponsored by Oxford University indicated that legal antique ivory trading in the European Union continues to fuel the poaching of elephants.
The claim that Al-Shabaab received up to 40% of its funding from the sale of elephant ivory gained further attention following the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya.
[83] It is possible that some Somali poachers paid taxes to Al-Shabaab while smuggling ivory through their territory, representing only a small portion of the group's total income.
The purpose of this conference was to recognize "the significant scale and detrimental economic, social and environmental consequences of the illegal trade in wildlife, make the following political commitment and call upon the international community to act together to bring this to an end.
One such article reported "William Hague said the deal would "mark the turning point in the fight to save endangered species and to end the illegal wildlife trade".
[93][94] Trade in walrus ivory has taken place for hundreds of years in large regions of the northern hemisphere, involving such groups as the Norse,[95] Russians, other Europeans, the Inuit, and the people of Greenland.
[96] The natives are permitted to sell the ivory of the hunted walrus to non–natives as long as it is reported to a United States Fish and Wildlife Service representative, tagged and fashioned into some type of handicraft.
In the nineteenth century, Bering Strait Inuit traded, among other things, walrus ivory to the Chinese, for glass beads and iron goods.
The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans restricts the export of narwhal tusks and other related products from these communities, including Iqaluit, the territorial capital.
