Image Credit: THINKSTOCK
Hong Kong’s booming ivory market is helping push elephants toward extinction, conservationists said Thursday, reporting more ivory items on sale there than in any other city.
The sale of ivory items from government-registered stockpiles predating the 1989 ban is legal for domestic use in Hong Kong, but a report by Save the Elephants found tusks from recently slaughtered elephants were being passed off as old ivory, and that this ivory was being bought and then illegally smuggled to mainland China on a huge scale.
“Hong Kong’s ivory trade is creating a significant loophole in international efforts to end the killing of elephants in Africa,” said the report released in Kenya and Hong Kong.
“No other city surveyed has so many pieces of ivory on sale as Hong Kong,” report co-author Esmond Martin said.
The report found more than 30,800 items — mainly jewellery and figurines — for sale in 72 stores and estimated that over 90 percent of sales were to buyers from mainland China, where demand for ivory is high.
Hong Kong’s low taxes make ivory cheaper than on the Chinese mainland.
The report said lax border controls and the sheer volume of people crossing each year abetted the trade, which was having a major impact on efforts to end elephant poaching in Africa.
“A mass slaughtering of African elephants is underway, yet the Hong Kong government is turning a blind eye,” said Alex Hofford of campaign group WildAid.
“For 25 years since the international ban, Hong Kong’s ivory traders appear to have been laundering poached ivory from illegally-killed elephants into their stocks,” said Hofford.
The report described Hong Kong as the world’s third-largest ivory smuggling hub after Kenya and Tanzania.
However, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong’s agriculture, fisheries and conservation department disputed the report and said there was “no plan” to ban the island’s ivory trade.
Read Full Article: Discovery News
Ethics Asylum 