In transition: Bangkok’s ivory market
Surveys by TRAFFIC have found a huge fall in the amount of ivory openly for sale in Thailand’s Bangkok markets over the past two years from a high of 7,421 ivory items in 2014 to just 283 products by June this year – a 96 per cent drop. In Transition: Bangkok’s ivory market includes data from 30 month surveys carried out between December 2014 and June 2016. It was unveiled in Johannesburg during the 17th Conference of the Parties (CoP17) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), where efforts to address the illegal ivory trade and the closure of domestic ivory markets are high on the agenda. Along with 18 other countries, Thailand is in the spotlight at the conference over progress under the CITES-led National Ivory Action Plan (NIAP) process, which was initiated at the last CoP in 2013. At the time the country was considered to have the largest unregulated ivory market in the world.