China has ivory ban announced in what is great news for the African elephant, an endangered species.
Beijing has said that the ivory trade and its processing, like the legitimate antique auctions, will be banned by the end of March 2017.
Conservationists say the move against the Chinese market, which is estimated to be taking the 70 percent of the planet's ivory trade, also puts pressure on neighboring Hong Kong and Great Britain to eliminate existing loopholes.
It is great news that reduce the world's largest ivory market of the elephant, as Aili King, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Asia, says. It's a big change for African elephants as we are now turning to other countries to follow China and close their markets as well.
Lo Sze Ping, Chief Executive Officer of WWF China, states: “close the world's largest market Legal ivory will stop people from buying ivory and will make it more difficult for ivory traffickers to sell ivory they have obtained illegally.»
This prohibition will affect 34 processing associations and 143 avenues of commerce. The move follows a promise made by Beijing to ban imports brought in before 1975, except for antique auctions, which will be allowed under strict supervision, although it leaves a hole.
Between 800 and 900 cases of ivory trafficking They are discovered in China every year and more than half of the legitimate ivory business is linked to the illegal trade. Over the past decade, some 100.000 elephants have been lost to poaching, and the African elephant population has dropped from an estimated 111.000 to 415.000.
Anyway, I know it will take years to return to recover the figures of the African elephant population, due to their slow reproduction and being long-lived animals; apart from that it is known that now they are born without fangs for their excessive hunting.