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China Says It Will Shut Down Ivory Trade By End of 2017 (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: China says it plans to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017 in a move designed to curb the mass slaughter of African elephants. The Chinese government will end the processing and selling of ivory and ivory products by the end of March as it phases out the legal trade, according to a statement released on Friday. China had previously announced it planned to shut down the commercial trade, which conservationists described as significant because China's vast, increasingly affluent consumer market drives much of the elephant poaching across Africa. China, which has supported an ivory-carving industry as part of its cultural heritage, said carvers will be encouraged to change their activities and work, for example, in the restoration of artifacts for museums. More efforts will be made to stop the illegal trade, the statement said. China has allowed trade in ivory acquired before a 1989 ban on the ivory trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which seeks to regulate the multi-billion-dollar trade in wild animals and plants. The number of Africa's savannah elephants dropped by about 30 percent from 2007 to 2014, to 352,000, because of poaching, according to a study published this year. Forest elephants, which are more difficult to count, are also under severe threat.
What? You think the Chinese fucking CARE?
This is from a 2013 Time article (emphasis added):
In a 2007 survey, the IFAW [International Fund for Animal Welfare] discovered that 70% of Chinese polled did not know that ivory came from dead elephants. This led to the organization's first ad campaign- a simple poster explaining the actual origins of ivory. A campaign evaluation earlier this year found that the ad, promoted by the world's largest outdoor advertising company JC Decaux, had been seen by 75% by China's urban population, and heavily impacted their view on ivory. Among people classified as "high risk"- that is, those likeliest to buy ivory- the proportion who would actually do so after seeing the ad was almost slashed by half.