Brendan Moyle • Mar 09, 2015 •
Singapore customs has reported a seizure of 1099 tusks and pieces of raw ivory. This is the second largest seizure they have made since 2002, when six tonnes was intercepted (a reminder that poaching is not technically a recent problem) . The ivory is reported to have been packed into 65 gunny sacks. They are being discrete on the … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Mar 03, 2015 •
It is a persistent problem with the illegal ivory market, is we don’t have actual records of how much is being sold. It is difficult to determine what the size of the market for carvings, what proportion are new carvings from recently poached ivory, what percentage are fake ivory, and what percentage is older carvings being resold. One thing our … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Feb 12, 2015 •
Reducing the illegal demand in ivory is an important strategy to bring elephant poaching in Africa down to sustainable levels. With that in mind, the CITES Secretariat and the CITES Management Authority of China organised a workshop in Hangzhou. This was held over the the 28 and 29th of January. As I’ve previously posted, I was there presenting some … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Jan 14, 2015 •
One aspect of the current elephant poaching crisis is the contribution of organised crime. If we look back to the last time elephants were being decimated in the 1980s, this was not the case. So understanding these criminal organisations and their motivations is important. So far I’ve been able to show that smuggling levels, are in part, driven by shipping … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Oct 22, 2014 •
Well, not exactly. But on Friday, I will be at Otago University and giving a seminar on ivory black markets. One topic I’m going to highlight is whether the legal factories in China (all 37 of them) are a significant source of illegal carvings. The production problem is usually glibly ignored or assumed away. But essentially, if you do … Read More
Brendan Moyle • May 02, 2014 •
One of the important areas to understand in the illegal ivory business, is just how long it takes to turn raw-ivory into carvings. The crucial point alluded to before is that the rise in smuggling is generated by raw-ivory seizures. Critics of the 2008 CITES decision to allow China and Japan to import raw-ivory argue this is being manifested in … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Apr 22, 2014 •
One of the unsettled issues with the surge in elephant poaching seen after 2008/9 is explaining why it took off. The scale represents a break from the past. It seems inexplicable in terms of what we understood the drivers of poaching were. These were basically either affluence in consumer markets (like Asia) or poor governance in African countries. Neither … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Mar 04, 2014 •
Elephant poaching exploded in the late 2000s. This has led to a range of measures to stop this traffic. Some are quite sensible- increased international cooperation and coordination on enforcement has had successes. Both Operation Cobra (2013) and Operation Cobra II (2014) shattered some conspiracies in Africa and Asia. Some measure, well, seem to be applied in haste and … Read More