Study: Illegal Poaching Could Drive African Elephants to Extinction

Demand in China for African elephant ivory drives illegal poaching and could push the creatures into extinction. “A kilogram of ivory can now fetch as much as $7,000 in China, where it's used for ornaments or ground up for use in traditional medicine,” explains Brad Plumer for Vox. The study examines the connections between poaching, China’s internal legal ivory market, the black market, and rising prices. China has demonstrated that it can stem demand and poaching – after an estimated 8 percent of the African elephant population was poached in 2011, China cracked down and poaching went down for 2012. Governments in Africa vary in their ability to control poaching, and conflict certainly does not help. Conservation and tourism are strong in Nambia and dismal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. – YaleGlobal