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

Daniel Stiles/TRAFFIC Southeast Asia
Ivory is sold in great quantity and openly at Jatujak Market
Chinese-carved tusk to the USA. He fabricated a certificate that stated the piece was mammoth ivory to
enable export and subsequent import to the USA. He said that he did this often and that it was easy to do.
This is just one example of what occurs commonly here.
Another shop that in December 2006 had the largest quantity of ivory had many fewer items in February
2007. Evidently sales had been good over the Western and Chinese New Year periods, but no replacement
of ivory stock had taken place. Many of the larger items were gone. Most of the ivory items seen in the
market were jewellery and smaller figurines and there were virtually no large pieces. Several of the shops
in Section 1 (Antiques) of the market were selling ivory beads in wholesale fashion.
Charoen Krung Road/Chinatown – Charoen Krung (New) Road was surveyed from Sathorn Road into
Chinatown to its terminus at the Klong Lod canal. Eighteen outlets selling 1243 ivory items were found
in shops along the road itself. Yaowarat Road had only two outlets with 336 items. One was an ivory
specialty shop and the other was in a hotel. The owner of the long-established ivory speciality shop
maintained that he was the only shop left selling ivory in Chinatown, which turned out not to be the case.
He also said that no ivory craftsmen were still working in Chinatown, which did seem to be true, as none
could be found. The Nakhon Kasem (Thieves Market) had three outlets selling 81 ivory items, plus a
number of resin, bone and mammoth ivory items being sold as elephant ivory. The Old Siam department
store contained 10 shops selling 569 ivory items, mostly jewellery.
The elephant and ivory trade in Thailand
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