New China policy could save elephants

JOHANNESBURG — Conservationists hail it as a possible game-changer in the struggle to curb the slaughter of elephants: an unexpected pledge by a senior Chinese official to stop the ivory trade in a country whose vast, increasingly affluent consumer market drives elephant poaching across Africa.

Now they are waiting in suspense for China to outline how and when it would ban an industry that criminal syndicates use as cover for their illicit business in tusks.

The ban could happen in 2017 when a legal stockpile of ivory in China is possibly depleted, predicted Zhou Fei, head of the China office of TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring organization. He said he is encouraged by the political will of China’s top leadership to combat poaching that, by some estimates, has killed more than 100,000 African elephants in the past several years and prompted governments to publicly destroy confiscated ivory in major cities, including New York City last week.

The May 29 comment by Zhao Shucong, head of China’s State Forestry Administration, came at a Beijing event in which 1,455 pounds of ivory were crushed, rendering tusks, carved statues and other ornaments useless for sale.

“Under the legal framework of CITES and domestic laws and regulations, we will strictly control ivory processing and trade until the commercial processing and sale of ivory and its products are eventually halted,” Zhao said in an English-language translation of his speech that was provided by his office.

CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which seeks to regulate the multibillion-dollar trade in wild animals and plants. China allows trade in ivory acquired before a 1989 CITES ban and from a onetime, CITES-approved purchase by China and Japan of an ivory stockpile from several African countries in 2008. Conservation groups say China’s illegal trade has since flourished.

“The fact that China is now talking about shutting down its own market could be huge,” Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of wildlife conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.