RISING Chinese demand for products made from elephant skin is driving poaching and posing an even greater threat to Asia’s wild herds than the ivory trade, according to a report by a British-based conservation group.
The group Elephant Family said the threat is currently greatest in Burma, but warned that the Asian elephant could become extinct in half of the areas where it now ranges in the region.
It said the threat exceeds that from the ivory trade because poachers are targeting any elephant, not just those with tusks, and threatens elephants that are scattered in poorly protected areas.
The report’s authors said that the elephant’s skin is ground into powder and sold in China as a cure for stomach ailments, as well as being fashioned into beads for necklaces, bracelets and pendants.
The products are sold in physical markets and increasingly over the internet.
Belinda Stewart-Cox, Elephant Family’s director of conservation, said from the time the group started monitoring in 2014, there has been “a major ramping up of the advertising, the promotional pitches and the apparent sales”.
She said it seems as if “there are marketers and profiteers behind this looking to ratchet up what has, I think, long been a very, very minor incidental or local market trade of no great scale, or no scale that was threatening, anyway”.
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