ILLEGAL TRADE
China faces quandary over burning of ivory
The fate of China’s ivory stockpile has far-reaching implications for conservation and black-market prices, writes Adam Minter
China’s promise to shut down its commercial ivory trade by the end of 2017 is good news for Africa’s elephants. For the Chinese government, though, it creates a strange problem: what to do with its 40-tonne stockpile of ivory, worth about $150m. Although that may not sound like a lot, how China approaches that hoard may be almost as consequential for conservation as the ban on trade. Nowhere is demand for ivory higher than in China, where it has been used in handicrafts for thousands of years. Much of the trade has been regulated, with the government occasionally allowing imports of seized and stockpiled ivory that is sold through a network of authorised workshops and dealers. Collectively, government and legal private stockpiles are now estimated to be worth about $600m. Black-market supplies, which are sometimes laundered through the official system, may be much larger.
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