The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand (PDF, 800 KB) - Traffic

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The logging ban effectively left about 70% of Thailand’s domesticated elephants unemployed. The owners of many of these animals eventually moved them into various tourism-related activities, or took them to cities to become “street elephants”, where the mahouts can obtain money by begging. In early 2001, Tipprasert (2002) estimated that there were still between 1200 and 1400 unemployed elephants, over 1000 tourism elephants and about 100 street elephants. What has happened and is happening to these elephants will be discussed in more detail under the Elephant Trade section of this report. No comprehensive wild elephant count has been carried out in Thailand, but the population appears to have remained stable at around 1650 animals from the late 1980s (Santiapillai and Jackson, 1990) to the year 2000 (Kemf and Santiapillai, 2000). On the other hand, Lohanan (2002) believes that there are fewer than 1000 elephants in the country based on carcass finds and sighting reports. Blake and Hedges (2004) are somewhat more optimistic and give a figure of between 2500 and 3200 wild elephants, with the caveat that no reliable population estimate is possible in the absence of a systematic count. Looking at things from an historical perspective, the National Elephant Institute stated that there were 200 000 elephants in Thailand in 1782 and 100 000 in 1900, indicating that the situation has deteriorated significantly in the 21 st century (Kanwanich, 2003). Daniel Stiles/TRAFFIC Southeast Asia Elephants were used as war mounts as early as the 13th century in Thailand The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand 2
INTRODUCTION The demand for ivory as a result of rapid economic development during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in East Asia, led to rampant poaching and the serious decline of elephant populations in many Asian and African range countries. Various measures were introduced under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the hope of reducing threats to elephant populations through the regulation of international ivory trade. The first of these actions was to include the Asian Elephant Elephas maximus in Appendix I and the African Elephant Loxodonta africana in Appendix II at the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 1976. In 1989, in recognition of a serious decline in many African Elephant populations, the Parties agreed to transfer L. africana to Appendix I. This decision of the 7 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES constituted a ban on all commercial international trade in all elephants and elephant products, including ivory (Dublin et al., 1995; Nash, 1997). The 1989 ban initially served to reduce ivory demand significantly in Europe, the USA and Japan, which led to a decline in elephant poaching in many parts of Africa (Martin and Stiles, 2003, 2005, 2008; Dublin et al., 1995). There is evidence, however, that the trade ban might have had the opposite affect on Asian Elephants in some countries, as Asian ivory traders attempted to replace African ivory with Asian ivory (Stiles, 2004a). In countries with weak law enforcement, such as Cambodia, Lao PDR and Viet Nam, wild elephant numbers for the three countries dropped from an estimated total of 6250 in the late 1980s to 1510 in 2000 (Santiapillai and Jackson, 1990; Kemf and Santiapillai, 2000; Martin and Stiles, 2002; Stiles, 2004a). In the late 1980s and 1990s local ivory demand grew significantly in China and Thailand as a result of a rising standard of living putting more discretionary money into the hands of growing middle and upper classes, and concomitantly rising tourist numbers. However, overall demand was lower in 2002 than in 1989 in China because of the drop in ivory exports to the West (Martin and Stiles, 2002, 2003). Tourism is the main driving factor behind the ivory market in Thailand and the country enjoys continued growth in this sector. The Office of Tourism Development of Thailand reported that there were 13.82 million visitors in 2006 and 14.46 million in 2007 (Anon., 2008). The 10 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (CoP10) devised a specific Resolution on Trade in Elephant Specimens, which was subsequently revised at the 12 th and 14 th meetings of the Conference of the Parties [Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12 and CoP14)]. Regarding control of internal ivory trade, this Resolution recommended to those Parties in whose jurisdiction there is an ivory carving industry that is not yet structured, organized or controlled that comprehensive internal legislative, regulatory and enforcement measures be adopted to: a) register or license all importers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers dealing in raw, semiworked or worked ivory products; b) establish a nationwide procedure, particularly in retail outlets, informing tourists and other nonnationals that they should not purchase ivory in cases where it is illegal for them to import it into their own home countries; and c) introduce recording and inspection procedures to enable the Management Authority and other The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand 3
Page 1 and 2: THE ELEPHANT AND IVORY TRADE IN THA
Page 3 and 4: THE ELEPHANT AND IVORY TRADE IN THA
Page 5 and 6: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The staff of the T
Page 7 and 8: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Asian Elephants a
Page 9 and 10: • Thailand illegally imports many
Page 11: BACKGROUND Asian Elephants Elephas
Page 15 and 16: Comprehensive analyses of ETIS reco
Page 17 and 18: The presence and type of ivory subs
Page 19 and 20: This, of course, may not be easy to
Page 21 and 22: Daniel Stiles/TRAFFIC Southeast Asi
Page 23 and 24: Table 1. (continued) Elephant camps
Page 25 and 26: D C F U I O Appendix-I specimens br
Page 27 and 28: Table 2. (continued) Live Asian Ele
Page 29 and 30: In all, at least 66 of the 235 (28%
Page 31 and 32: Table 5. (continued) Seizures of il
Page 33 and 34: one craftsman working near Khao San
Page 35 and 36: The visit to Phayuha Kiri to interv
Page 37 and 38: Table 6. Number of ivory carvers an
Page 45 and 46: There was quite remarkable variabil
Page 47 and 48: Chiang Mai A total of 26 outlets se
Page 49 and 50: THB150 (USD4.30), while in Bangkok
Page 51 and 52: supporting the view of informants w
Page 53 and 54: The TRAFFIC/WWF briefing document t
Page 55 and 56: Despite the efforts detailed in Tha
Page 57 and 58: kilogrammes cost from USD286-429/kg
Page 59 and 60: Table 19 presents a comparison of r
Page 61 and 62: law, but the proportion cannot be e
Page 63 and 64:
Appendix 1.Thailand and the Elephan
Page 65 and 66:
Table 1: ETIS records for number of
Page 67 and 68:
Buddhas, Nanggwak and singhas. Boon
Page 69 and 70:
Dublin, H., Milliken, T. and Barnes
Page 71 and 72:
Stiles, D. (2004a). The ivory trade
Page 73:
The elephant and ivory trade in Tha
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