After hearing that last year alone, more than 12% of the world’s elephants were killed for their tusks, a team from National Geographic decided to make a special on the threats to the world’s largest land animal. Why is the demand for ivory as high now as it’s ever been?
According to Brian Christie, one of the world’s foremost experts on the ivory trade, the answer is China. Ivory has been a status symbol in China for over 2,000 years; it’s a unique medium for depicting cultural and religious symbols, and the craft of carving it is an esteemed traditional skill. Indeed, a master ivory carver featured in the video below spent two years on a breathtaking diorama that is valued at over $1 million. It is an artform unique to China, involving techniques that have been honed for generations, and the Chinese government is not about to let it die out.
The development that will really threaten the world’s elephants, however, is China’s economic ascent and the concomitant growth of its middle class, whose members are suddenly able to afford ivory products. National Geographic’s research revealed that 83% of this middle class intends to buy such products in the future. Government-registered carving factories have consequently joined individual craftsmen in catering for the exploding demand. The Government is deliberately expanding the ivory market, recruiting many young people to carving jobs; empty desks in the factories generally do not indicate jobs recently vacated, but vacant positions not yet filled.
It is due to these developments that the elephant population is now at the lowest levels ever recorded, and due to their acceleration that some analysts predict the elephant will be extinct in the wild within the next decade.
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