Elephants still at risk with Laos replacing China as ivory market

An elephant is lifted by a crane in an upside down position during a relocation exercise from Chemeron Farm in Rongai, Nakuru County to Aberdare National Park, on September, 28, 2017. The African elephant is still under threat as a new market for ivory emerges in Laos on the border of Thailand.

In Summary

Poaching to satisfy demand for ivory by Asian markets has seen the worst declines in Africa’s overall elephant population in the past 10 years.

In 1979, when 1.2 million elephants roamed Africa, Kenya had 167,000, says the Kenya Wildlife Service. Today, the total elephant population in Kenya is estimated at 38,000.

The conservationists said the world needed to put pressure on the Laos Government and other countries around china, such as Burma and Vietnam, to act on the burgeoning trade, if efforts to conserve the African elephant are going to work.

It was something of a triumph when China announced earlier this year that it was going to enforce a ban on domestic ivory trade.

However, a conservation group that has been studying the situation now says the African elephant is still under threat as the trade shifts to Laos.

Conservationists working under the umbrella of Save the Elephants Foundation said Thursday that as ivory shops and carving factories closed shop in China following the State-sanctioned ban, more were popping up in the tourist markets northwest of Laos on the border of Thailand close to Burma and China.

The ivory researchers who have been trailing the trade in ivory around the world for decades say the Chinese have moved their trade across the border to maintain demand with a long cultural heritage in China, making the southeast Asian country the fastest growing market in the world.

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