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ASIDES
ILLEGAL IVORY AND LIVE ELEPHANT TRADE THRIVING IN THAILAND
Illegal ivory and live elephant trade thriving in Thailand
Poor regulation and lack of law enforcement in Thailand is enabling a thriving trade in illegal ivory and live elephants according to a WWF-supported investigation.
TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, recently announced that Thailand harbours the largest illegal ivory market in Asia, with the legal trade in ivory from domesticated elephants disguising contraband products.
Ivory from domesticated elephants is not illegal but Thailand’s system for registering such elephants and any resulting ivory is full of loopholes and illegal ivory from endangered wild Asian elephants is fed into the burgeoning ivory products market.
TRAFFIC‘s survey documented over 26,000 worked ivory products for sale in local markets, with many more retail outlets dealing in ivory products than were observed during market surveys carried out in 2001.
Tom Milliken, of TRAFFIC said: “Thailand has consistently been identified as one of the world’s top five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade, but shows little sign of addressing outstanding issues. Thailand needs to reassess its policy for controlling its local ivory markets as currently it is not implementing international requirements to the ongoing detriment of both African and Asian Elephant populations. Since 2004, the Thai government has only reported two ivory seizure cases totaling 1.2 tonnes of raw ivory.”
The report also highlights the lack of regulation of the trade in live elephants with wild-caught, elephants from both Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar being traded alongside captive-bred animals.
It is believed that hundreds of wild elephants have been caught and imported from Myanmar in recent years and sold to elephant trekking companies. The capture of wild elephants has been banned in Thailand since the 1970s, but such trade usually goes undetected because domesticated elephants do not have to be registered legally until they are eight years of age.
Dr Colman O’Criodain of WWF said: “The Thai Government needs to crack down on this serious illegal activity and stop allowing people to abuse the law. A good first step would be to put in place a comprehensive registration system for all ivory in trade and for live elephants”.
