Good News for Elephants: Thailand Will Ban Its Domestic Ivory Trade

International trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, when elephants were listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) treaty, which is reserved for protecting endangered species. But as we've seen, the most recent boom in the wildlife trade has pushed elephant poaching to record levels despite the theoretical ban. Why's that? Well, partially, it's because domestic ivory trade is legal in both China, the world's largest market, and, until now, Thailand.

To kick off the CITES conference this week in Bangkok, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced that Thailand will end its domestic ivory trade. That's a big step towards preventing the laundering of poached African ivory in Asian markets.

"This will help protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa," Yingluck said in a statement.

Thailand's current law allows for the trade of ivory harvested from elephants who died of natural causes, and only within its borders. Seems like a fair use, but there's one problem: Experts from Traffic, WWF's wildlife trade monitoring group, estimate the total amount of ivory available from naturally-dying Thai elephants to amount to less than 20 pounds a year, which wildlife advocates say is less than is actually being traded.

But it's hard to tell when exactly the ivory traded in Thai markets was actually harvested. When the 1989 ban was enacted, countries with ivory interests were supposed to audit their ivory stockpiles to provide a baseline for how much ivory could be legally traded internally. Thailand allegedly never did that, which essentially means that no one knows how much ivory is legally supposed to be within the country. Because of that, valuable ivory poaching from Africa can easily be laundered within Thailand.

Thai officials have long contested that its domestic trade doesn't involve African ivory, and that its permit system helps ensure that any new ivory is legal and tracked. Opponents argue that permits, which are little more than certificates of authenticity, are easily forged, and that enforcement is sorely lacking. The commitment from the Prime Minister is thus a fairly big step, but it all depends on how well–and how soon–the law is enforced.

"Prime Minister Shinawatra now needs to provide a timeline for this ban and ensure that it takes place as a matter of urgency, because the slaughter of elephants continues," Carlos Drews, head of WWF's delegation to the CITES conference, told Reuters.

Nonetheless, the ban in the world's second largest ivory market helps quell an issue plaguing the wildlife trade in general: It's nigh impossible to effectively enforce laws when products are legal in one place, and not in another. Permit systems worldwide for ivory, rhino horn, and the like are all patchwork at best, and even then they're hardly secure. As such, it's extremely difficult for any officials to tell where a piece of ivory came from; if it's found in a legal market, it's not likely to be questioned. As such, enforcement efforts as well as regulation efforts end up mired in vagaries.

The solution to make a comprehensive step towards fighting the poaching crisis is to make laws uniform. In the case of ivory, elephants are being killed at far above sustainable levels, and legal markets like Thailand's only offer the opportunity for illegal ivory to find buyers. If any ivory, no matter the origin, is illegal, enforcement becomes a more simple proposition. That doesn't mean that stopping the trade will be easy; corruption is a huge problem, for one, and there will always be black market operators.

But to slow the trade, the key is to push the trade as far underground as possible, to limit access to buyers, both casual and serious alike. While I'm certainly skeptical of whether or not Thailand will take the ban seriously, if it does indeed enact the ban soon, it will be taking a large step towards unilaterally condemning the trade. Of course, the elephant in the room (sorry) is still China, which simply doesn't care about wildlife issues. Still, today's a good day for elephants.

@derektmead