https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.447e886272f4

BEIJING — China will close 67 ivory carving factories and retail shops on Friday, roughly one-third of the total, as it moves to implement a pledge to end all domestic ivory sales by the end of the year.

The news will likely foster hopes that an end to the elephant poaching crisis in Africa might be in sight and comes as a new study shows that prices of ivory in China are continuing to plummet.

Reducing demand from China, the world’s biggest ivory market, is probably the single most important factor that could help bring an end to the widespread poaching of elephants in Africa.

In a report issued Wednesday, Save The Elephants said the average wholesale price of tusks in China was $2,100 per kilogram in early 2014, but had fallen to $1,100 by late 2015, before reaching $730 in February 2017.

It credits a combination of an economic slowdown, an official anti-corruption campaign, a government commitment to ending the trade and growing public awareness.

Conservationists heralded the Chinese government’s pledge to close its domestic ivory industry as a “game-changer” and welcomed evidence it was being implemented.

[China’s vow to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017 is a ‘game changer’ for elephants]

“These closures prove that China means business in closing down the ivory trade and helping the African elephant,” said Peter Knights, chief executive of WildAid, a San-Francisco-based group that has played a leading role in raising public awareness in China about the link between ivory and poaching.

Knights said the latest price decline shows ivory “is now a very bad investment” and said he expected a further decline in prices by the end of the year.

Lucy Vigne, one of the authors of the Save The Elephants report, said the legal ivory trade in China was “severely diminished,” with licensed outlets gradually reducing the quantity of items on display and cutting prices.

The legal trade in ivory in China, using a stockpile amassed before a global ban, was the cover for a much larger illegal trade that fueled poaching, conservationists say.

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“Law enforcement is key to success,” Vigne said in a news release. “This is already improving in China — we have seen a decline in the number of illegal ivory items on display for sale since 2013.”

China’s State Forestry Administration announced the closure of the ivory carving workshops and retail outlets on its website on March 24, as part of an “orderly process” to end the trade. WildAid said 12 out of 34 ivory carving factories in China were being closed, and 45 out of 130 retail shops.

Although poaching may have peaked a few years ago, some 20,000 African elephants continue to be killed for their tusks every year, experts say, largely to meet ivory demands from Asia, particularly China.

Africa’s elephant population has dwindled from about 1.2 million 35 years ago to between 400,000 and 500,000 now. Central African forest elephants could be extinct within the next decade if current trends continue, while Tanzania’s elephant population fell by 60 percent between 2009 and 2014, census data showed.

Knights said the ban was already helping, with seizures of ivory coming into China down by 80 percent in 2016 and poaching falling in Kenya. But Hong Kong and Britain have yet to pass proposed bans on the ivory trade, while Japan’s market “remains wide open,” according to WildAid.

Shit, black market will take over and it will only get more expensive
It will not turn off people's taste for it in China and South East Asia

It will be SHOWN as a WIN for the ANTI'S and SPLATTERED all over the LIBERAL Media!!!

I was in Beijing before the Olympic Games a few years back. The Chinese government pledged to crack down on copyright infringement you know, things like Ping golf clubs, Tommy Hilfiger shirts, etc. They even showed the footage of the shops being bulldozed.

Reality, The shops were bulldozed to make room for new hotels near the venue. The Chinese govt built brand new air-conditioned shopping centers and relocated the vendors there.

The Chinese govt does not care about world opinion and will spout the needed words to facilitate the deal of the moment and then do what they want anyway.

I was back in Beijing last year multiple times. The nice new air-conditioned shops are still selling the same goods as they were before the "crackdown". I would say the quality has even improved a bit.