Conservationists: New China policy could save elephants

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — 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 (660 kilograms) of ivory were crushed, rendering tusks, carved statues and other ornaments useless for sale.

FULL story at link.



The U.S. government display confiscated illegal ivory before crushing more than a ton in an effort to halt elephant poaching and ivory trafficking, Friday, June 19, 2015, at Times Square in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b5edcf6c03074de092fe8caed071eb71/conservationists-new-china-policy-could-save-elephants

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[sulphurdunn]

1. We humans are driving

mass extinction. There are too many of us and we cannot rise above our evolution to save ourselves from ourselves.