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

There was an enormous spike in exported worked ivory in 1988, no doubt in anticipation of the CITES
ivory trade ban.
Martin carried out a brief wildlife trade survey of Bangkok in 1979, including ivory, and he recorded the
prices of several items. He noted that there was a wide variety of ivory items in curio shops and that the
main buyers were Japanese and Europeans, particularly [West] Germans (Martin and Stiles, 2002).
Luxmoore (1989) conducted the next recorded ivory survey of Thailand and found several Bangkok shops
with more than 200kg each of ivory on display. Interestingly, he concluded based on style that most of it
was imported from Hong Kong or China, though the vendors did not wish to admit it, claiming that the
pieces were carved in Thailand.
Luxmoore (1989) visited five shops in Chiang Mai with substantial amounts of ivory and was told that all
of the raw ivory was Burmese (Myanmar) in origin and carved in their own factories in Chiang Mai. He
concluded that this was untrue and he estimated that 30-50% came from Hong Kong or China, 20-35% was
from Phayuha Kiri and only 20-40% came from local carvers. He stated that Thais bought little ivory,
mainly the smaller amulets and other charms, and if wealthy, the occasional mounted polished tusks to
display as status symbols. He concluded that tourists bought most of the ivory.
Chen Hin Keong (cited in Nash, 1997) conducted an ivory survey in 1997 in Thailand as part of a general
undertaking carried out by TRAFFIC to assess how well the CITES ivory trade ban was faring in Asia. In
the report he also presented details about a limited 1993 TRAFFIC survey that looked only at name seals
and cigarette holders in Bangkok, assuming these would be likely items for tourists to carry illegally out
of the country. They found approximately 1916 name seals and 545 cigarette holders in 39 jewellery, gem
and souvenir shops in 1993, numbers much higher than seen in the 2001 and 2006/2008 surveys for a
comparable number of outlets. The 1997 survey was not complete enough to draw any other comparative
conclusions.
WWF-Thailand conducted two ivory surveys of 111 hotels and shops in Bangkok in 2000 and 2003
(Mather, undated). Table 8 presents the results.
Table 8.
Ivory trade in Bangkok hotels and shops, 2000 and 2003
Hotels (n=111) Shops (n=78) Total
Survey 1 (12/2000) 35 with ivory 78 with ivory 113 with ivory
No. of pieces 15 465 11 424 26 889
Survey 2 (10/2003) 17 with ivory 78 with ivory 95 with ivory
No. of pieces 5 355 13 612 18 967
Source: WWF-Thailand
Efforts by the CITES/Ivory enforcement team under MoNRE, inspired by WWF-Thailand, cut the number
of hotels selling ivory by 50% and the number of ivory pieces the hotels sold by almost two-thirds. The
amount of ivory sold by the non-hotel shops increased slightly, but they were not targeted by the campaign.
The operation continued in advance of CITES CoP13 held in Bangkok in October 2004. By August 2004,
only one of the hotels was still selling ivory.
The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand
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