China Given Green Light to Import Stockpiled Ivory

China will be allowed to join Japan in importing ivory through a one-off sale of ivory stockpiles by four southern African countries, the Standing Committee for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) announced this week. All proceeds of the sale must be put back into elephant conservation and community development projects benefiting those who live side by side with elephants.

CITES had earlier excluded China from participating in the sale, citing the country’s need to better enforce international rules on managing ivory. In its most recent decision, the CITES committee says China has dramatically increased its seizures of ivory and compliance with other rules. China will bid on the stockpiled ivory along with Japan, which was authorized as an ivory importer last year.

Since it banned the ivory trade in 1989, CITES has twice approved a one-off sale of ivory stockpiles in countries with growing and well-managed elephant populations. Both sales have sparked controversy, with many conservationists arguing such transactions encourage elephant poaching and fuel the illegal ivory trade. The decision to allow China to participate in the sale brought an additional outcry, with critics questioning whether China has adequate control over its ivory stocks. Other conservation organizations, however, say that the decision will force China to coninue to clamp down on the illegal trade and raise awareness about elephant conservation.

The controversy surrounding the fate of stockpiled ivory underscores the disparate challenges facing elephant conservationists across Africa. Elephant populations, while strong in some countries, are still struggling to rebound from years of heavy poaching in others. Loss of land and habitat fragmentation are also threatening the future of these iconic pachyderms, which need vast areas to feed and thrive.

To manage elephant populations and other wildlife across the continent, AWF’s Africa Heartland Program works to combine parks, private lands and community areas into large conservation landscapes. In the Kilimanjaro Heartland, for example, AWF is using satellite-tracking technology to collect data on elephant habitats and movement patterns in Kenya and Tanzania. This information is being used to develop conservation strategies that protect elephants as they move out of Amboseli National Park into Kilimanjaro National Park and areas further west.

In the Zambezi Heartland, a transboundary area that covers parts of Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, AWF is working to secure wildlife corridors that would give the region’s growing elephant population the freedom to move north while minimizing human-elephant conflict.

Through these efforts and others, AWF hopes to secure the future of Africa’s magnificent elephants across the entire continent.

To read more about AWF’s elephant conservation work, click here.

To read about the recent CITES decision, click here.