Ivory Tusks

1 Pages 293 Words

Elephants, Ivory and its Origins

The issue
Elephants have been exploited for their ivory in massive scales since the 1970s.

Types of Elephants being hunted
Asian (elephant maximus) and African (loxodonta africana) elephants are listed on Appendix I of CITES.

Geographic Locations
Most elephants in Africa reside in Zaire (112,000), followed by Gabon (78,000), Botswana (68,000), Tanzania (61,000), and Zimbabwe (52,000). Kenya's elephants have been greatly reduced and now number 16,000

What was the Ivory worth?
In the 1960s, raw ivory prices remained between $3 and $10 per pound. In 1975, the price reached $50 because ivory was perceived as a valuable hedge against rising inflation. By 1987, the price was $125 per pound. New manufacturing techniques, which enabled the mass production of ivory carvings, along with rising demand in East Asia and led to increased elephant kills.

Who were the consumers?
Hong Kong was the primary consumer of raw ivory from 1979 to 1987 and probably remains important today.

The ban
Before the 1989 CITES ban, illegal and legal ivory exports amounted to 770 metric tons, or about 75,000 elephants. The listing of elephants on Appendix I has effectively banned all trade in elephant ivory.

The 1989 ban was given temporary status, and re-evaluated at the 1992 CITES meeting in Kyoto, Japan. Again, several Southern African countries proposed downgrading of the African elephant to Appendix II status.

Trade
In the 10 years preceding the ivory trade ban, the estimated market value of Asian trade in raw ivory, was pinned at approximately $55 million, per year.
Before President Bush's 1989 ban, the United States was one of the largest importers of worked ivory in the world (valued at $11.8 million annually), behind Japan (38 percent) and the European Community (18 percent). The United States accounted for 12 percent of all ivory being traded (16 percent of worked ivory) internationally....