Group items tagged

The chain consists of activities of five key groups of supply chain actors: elephant owners, intermediaries, manufacturers, retailers, and ivory customers.

The international trade in wildlife parts and products is of significant conservation concern. The global demand for ivory, for example, is considered to be a significant threat to African elephant populations

The international trade in wildlife parts and products is of significant conservation concern. The global demand for ivory, for example, is considered to be a significant threat to African elephant populations

Ivory products, such as jewelry or sacred items, are manufactured in two main areas: Surin in the Northeast, and Nakhon Sawan and Uthai Thani in the North. Manufacturers in Surin source tusks from Surin-based elephants that are either living locally or working in other areas. Raw tusks sourced from the South and the North have lower prices. Tusks from Southern owners are largely sold to Surin manufacturers; some are supplied to manufacturers in Nakhon Sawan.

The illegal wildlife trade is currently one of the largest "black-market" industries in today’s world, falling fourth behind drug, gun, and human trafficking trades.

A ban on the legal sale of ivory in 1989 was put into effect by worldwide conservation organizations, such as The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the African Wildlife Fund (AWF), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to try to save the elephant populations which had dropped extensively in numbers.

ivory had been traded out of East Africa for centuries, the increasing scale of extraction in the nineteenth century would, in all probability, have had significant consequences for humans, elephants and the landscape. In order to understand these consequences, however, it is imperative to know where this ivory was being extracted and traded along East African caravan routes to then be able to consider the local ecosystems that were most affected by the trade