The End of Legal Ivory Trade in China The ancient art of ivory carving, trading, and selling is an important tradition in the Chinese culture that can date back to almost 3,000 BCE (Britannica). Around the time of the imperial era, ivory was used to carve statues of deities and medallions in garden scenes, which were envied by the court officials. Ivory carvings, chopsticks, and jewelry were also a way to show off wealth. This is what the ivory market was primarily driven by in China (Katz). The Chinese are very proud of their ivory carving history and argue that it is a long lasting tradition that should go on, even though about 30,000 elephants are killed by poachers for their ivory, every year. This means that the population of elephants …show more content…
Within just a week, China closed over 67 licensed ivory facilities, 12 ivory carving factories, and several dozen of 130 ivory retailers. As of early 2018, China has closed another 105 facilities. This now means that the ivory ban in China is totally complete. This ban will have a huge impact on the economy (Bale). Before the complete ban, China has worked hard by lowering prices of ivory from $2100 per kilogram in 2014 to $730 per kilogram in 2017, which was another big contribution to the complete ban. Elephant tusks can weigh anywhere from 23-45 kg, which means a tusk is worth approximately $17,000. Since 2017, the profits of poachers have declined a significant amount. Although there are many ivory carvers that are upset because they are afraid of losing the ancient tradition, the majority of people are happy and support the ban. As of right now, there is still the serious problem of black market ivory trade and sell, but there is no clear way to resolve that issue quite yet. Before the ban, the poaching of elephants has had a huge environmental effect in Africa. For a while, most of the people who brought this problem to the world’s attention were non-african leaders, which says something. China’s decision to close the world’s biggest ivory market will hopefully follow years of growing international and domestic pressure, gives wildlife protection, and advocates hope that elephants won’t become extinct for a long time