Hong Kong seems to be following China’s footsteps in banning ivory!

At the beginning of 2018, China officially banned the ivory trade within their country, and animal lovers and conservationists all over the world celebrated this big win! The elephant in the room was that Hong Kong still has a legal ivory trade, and this lead to many people believing that the trade would still keep going since people from China could potentially just travel to Hong Kong to get their ivory, then bring it back to the mainland. A huge amount of the ivory that have been sold in Hong Kong is to buyers that live in mainland China, so it’s obvious that this happened despite ivory being illegal to buy in mainland China.

An African elephant with ivory tusks. Over 30,000 elephants are killed each year in order to harvest their ivory and sell on the (mostly) Asian markets. Image by Gary M. Stolz/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, posted as Public Domain.

It now seems like Hong Kong is intent on following the footsteps of China and banning all ivory trade. The Hong Kong lawmakers held a vote on January 31st 2018, and the results was that they plan to end all ivory trade by 2021. The bill is known as the Endangered Species of Animals and Plants (Amendment) Bill 2017, or just the Hong Kong Ivory Ban Bill for short, and it does more than only just ban ivory; it also increases the penalties for wildlife crime in general, which will help scare away people from buying ivory and other illegal wildlife products.

Hong Kong has traditionally been known as the world’s largest ivory market. After CITES banned all international trade of ivory in 1989, Hong Kong (and previously mainland China) kept a national trade on the ivory that was already in the country. While this seem okay, many people and groups believe that a lot of ivory is illegally smuggled into the country, where it then is sold legally. Keep in mind that while I use the word believe, it’s pretty much confirmed that Hong Kong and China has been smuggling in lots of ivory from elephants that have been poached in Africa; it’s not like there is a huge ivory production in these countries by itself!

Once the bill passes into law, trading of this “legal” ivory will be made illegal, and hopefully this will decrease the demand and supply for ivory.

The road to banning ivory in China and Hong Kong has not been an easy one, and conservation groups have been fighting for this for several decades. China has seemed very uncooperative for a long time until things finally changed completely a few years back, and after this, the ban did not take too long.

Ivory that is to be crushed because it was imported to the US illegally. Image is Public Domain.

Will this help the elephants directly?

The question when news like this spreads is always if it will help. Some people believe that the demand for ivory will be just as big as before, while others are more optimistic and believes that the demand will be reduced. There are currently 30,000 illegally killed elephants every year, so I really do hope that this will quell some of the demand for ivory, but I guess no one can know for sure until the ban is in effect.

While it might not reduce the demand at first, I hope that it at least sends a strong message towards the buyers that this is not something people want! This will hopefully lead to a cultural change over time, where the next generation might not want to buy ivory to the same extent at the current generation.

Read more about ivory: The Siberian permafrost is melting, and ivory hunters is using this to get ivory from woolly mammoth carcasses that used to be frozen.

Thanks for reading

If you want to learn more, then check out the announcement by reuters. If you are interested in learning more about the ban of ivory in mainland China, then head over to the post I wrote at the beginning of the year. I hope that you guys enjoyed the post, and make sure to leave a comment below if you got anything to share!

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