Photo Carl De Souza

Early this morning on this first day of 2018, I fired up my news feeder and the very first article I saw was this, from National Geographic. China Shuts Down Its Legal Ivory Trade. I choose to see this as a favourable omen for the coming year – good news.

As of yesterday, December 31st, all legal, government-sanctioned ivory trade in China comes to an end and licensed ivory carving factories and retailers are closed.

Photo Tyrone Siu

Although there has been an international ban on ivory trading since 1990, China continued to allow it within its borders. Most of the legal ivory trade in China was from a bulk ivory purchase in 2008 from certain African countries but this enabled illegal trade in ivory to easily make its way into the system, thus hugely contributing to the continued poaching of elephants despite any bans. China is the largest consumer of ivory and its carvings are a long-sought after luxury item, playing a major role in the annual slaughter of some 30,000 African elephants.

The ban will be accompanied by a public awareness and education campaign to highlight the plight of elephants, and to reduce demand for the ivory products by encouraging people to respect the law and to “say ‘no’ to ivory” which I hope will have greater success than other “just say no” campaigns I can recall.