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It was an ordinary hot and humid Tuesday for customs officers at Hong Kong International Airport on June 10, 2014 until they discovered a record haul of elephant tusks.
Half a dozen hacked-up tusks wrapped in layers of aluminium foil and towels were found in an unassuming carry-on bag on a transit flight from Angola, en route to Cambodia.
Officers seized 31 other bags from the same flight with the same contents, amounting to a total seizure of 790kg of raw tusks and semi-finished ivory products valued at HK$7.9 million.
Sixteen Vietnamese nationals, aged 20 to 54, six of them women, were charged and later jailed for six months – lenient given that anyone found guilty of importing an endangered species without a licence can face a maximum of two years in prison.
An ocean away, Kenyan conservationists were still mourning the loss of Satao. Just two weeks before the big Hong Kong bust, the 45-year-old bull, one of the continent’s best known and loved elephants, was found dead in Tsavo national park, killed by a poisoned arrow, his faced hacked off and impressive tusks gone.
Kenyan officials believe up to 100 elephants were killed that year to June, but the figure is widely seen as an underestimate by conservationists.
A Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) report last year estimated a 38 per cent drop in African elephant numbers from over 166,000 in 2006 to just over 102,000 in 2013 primarily because of poaching, habitat loss and land-use changes.
And while no one can ever prove that Satao’s tusks were in those carry-on bags seized at Hong Kong airport, one indisputable fact among conservationists is that the city remains an epicentre of the international trade in illicit ivory – an industry worth an estimated US$19 billion that probably leads to 30,000 elephants being killed every year.
It came therefore as quite a surprise when Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced in his policy address earlier this month a pledge to kick-start the legislative process to ban the import and export of elephant hunting trophies as soon as possible, explore enacting laws to completely ban the local ivory trade and impose heavier penalties on smuggling and illegal trading of endangered species.
Much remains uncertain about the activity between poaching and consumption, but the illicit journey begins in Africa and mostly ends up in the hands of consumers on the mainland where ivory is perceived to be a luxury item and is the source of more than 70 per cent of global demand – whether legal or illegal.
At least one route – Hong Kong to Macau and then on to neighbouring Zhuhai before the goods are distributed to other markets – has been identified by activist groups as a popular one used by smugglers.
Based on statistics on seizures of ivory that has passed through Hong Kong, other destination countries include Singapore, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the US, Canada, Germany, Italy and a handful of other European nations.
“Though the seized items were reported to be destined for Hong Kong, it was believed that most would be transferred to peripheral regions,” said a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department.
The wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC has previously estimated that three tonnes of ivory was seized between 2000 and 2013 in mainland China, Singapore and other nations after passing through Hong Kong. But it is much more difficult to trace the point of origin and intermediary ports.
Sales have also moved online, especially through e-commerce sites targeting the mainland and increasingly now through social media. TRAFFIC estimates more than half of the illegal products offered online comprise ivory items.
Code words such as “African material”, “yellow material” and “white plastic” are used for online transactions , making it difficult for enforcement agencies to track what is happening.
“Trade flows constantly change, smugglers adapt and recent seizures impact their routing,” said Dr Yannick Kuehl, East and South Asia regional director for TRAFFIC. “They are also impacted by changes in airline [routes]”.
As to the source of this ivory, there are currently 37 elephant ranges spread out across 3.3 million square kilometres on the African subcontinent. Nearly two-thirds of African elephants are found in southern Africa, namely Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique among others, while about a quarter are found in East Africa, largely Tanzania and Kenya, where there has been the sharpest decline in elephant numbers.
Elephants are often killed by armed poaching gangs on reserves protected by under-equipped and outnumbered rangers. Some reports have linked poachers to militant and terrorist groups, who use ivory revenue to buy firearms and ammunition.
Either way, Kuehl said a high degree of coordination was needed for pick-up and distribution, meaning shipments of 500kg in weight or more were possibly “indicative of the involvement of organised crime”.
From the ranges, stock is sent to ports, assembled into shipments and packed into containers to be shipped half way around the world. The contraband is often concealed in boxes or mixed in with other items of a similar size, shape and density to “confuse” inspections and X-rays.
“Often, shipments aren’t sent on direct routes. This is presumably to try to evade detection,” Kuehl said. “Customs are less likely to target containers coming from within Asia than those arriving directly from a source country. We can also observe shifts in smuggling routes in response to enforcement action.”
Customs statistics indicate that most ivory and ivory products came from South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. But Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco and Tanzania are also common origin countries. Some of the shipments are routed through Malaysia or the Middle East, largely the United Arab Emirates, before arriving in Hong Kong..
Most shipments end up at the customs cargo examination compound in Kwai Chung labelled as consignments of anything from wooden planks to decorative glass, where they are screened and X-rayed.
But WWF-Hong Kong senior wildlife crime officer Cheryl Lo said smugglers were increasingly using more sophisticated means of smuggling, notably in more discreet quantities by air rather than by sea.
Customs foiled several cases at the airport last year involving transit passengers from Africa attempting to get onto planes with ivory stashed in special, customised body vests or wrapped in layers of canvas, nylon or linen bags and tucked into carry-on bags.
“An emerging trend has been observed on the smuggling of ivory into Hong Kong through air passenger and air postal and express parcel channels,” the customs department said.
Last year, there were 35 cases of ivory found in air parcels compared to just two in the previous year. There were also 53 cases of ivory found on air passengers last year compared to 87 in 2014.
The methods used to smuggle ivory have also become more creative. Last April, 6kg of ivory bracelets and raw tusk pieces were seized in a mainland woman’s backpack as she attempted to smuggle them into Shenzhen carrying a baby. She managed to evade Hong Kong authorities but was arrested by mainland customs officers at the border.
Lo said it was possible that tighter customs enforcement and increased awareness of the illegal ivory trade had made it harder for large-scale shipments to enter or pass through Hong Kong.
But the city’s reputation as an international transit hub for the illegal wildlife trade remains solidly in place.
The city has consistently ranked fifth in the world in terms of the quantity of illegal ivory seized since 1989. At least 33 tonnes was seized between 2000 and 2013, mostly at container ports. This accounted for roughly 14 per cent of global seizures by weight over the same period.
TRAFFIC’s Kuehl said there had been no obvious reduction so far in large-scale seizures at the global level.
Gavin Edwards, director of conservation at WWF, said the Hong Kong government faced two headaches. One was its role as a favoured transit point for smugglers due to its proximity to the mainland Chinese end market, strong connectivity and relatively low penalties for crimes relating to wildlife trade. The other, he said, was the domestic trade.
These headaches are not mutually exclusive. Conservationists believe the existence of the legal trade in Hong Kong fuels poaching and demand for ivory. It is alleged that licence holders can easily exploit loopholes in the system and launder stocks of illegal ivory.
A global ban on the international ivory trade, which covers Hong Kong, came into force in 1989. But permits were given for a handful of tusks, allowing them to be legally traded by licensed operators domestically. There are still about 111 tonnes of this legal ivory left in the market, down from 665 tonnes in 1989.
Whether it was tackling the problem at source or where demand was highest, Edwards said the phasing out of the legal trade in Hong Kong would drive the “masked” trade underground, making it harder for operators.
“We are optimistic that the illegal trade will drop eventually,” he said.
As for transit shipments, Edwards said Leung’s pledge of stricter penalties and fines would act as a stronger deterrent. He urged the government to allocate more resources to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department’s detection programme, which currently has just nine sniffer dogs manning more than a dozen control points.
Wildlife activist group WildAid also believed a ban would be a “historic step” for Hong Kong that would help curb rampant poaching across Africa, and called for a clear timetable from the government on how the trade would be banned.
Chief executive Peter Knights said: “Coupled with a 50 per cent drop in ivory prices in China over the last 18 months, the end of the crisis may be in sight.”
The importance of Hong Kong’s role in the international trade is open to debate. Leung Shun-cheung, who owns a store selling ivory products on Queen’s Road Central, is perplexed as to why his business has anything to do with illegal poaching in Africa or demand in mainland China.
“We can’t control where our customers take their ivory,” he said, pointing to shelves full of intricately carved ivory tusks from India, which were sourced before the 1989 trade ban. “The Hong Kong ivory industry is already a dying industry. They should focus on tackling [poaching] at the source, which is in Africa.”
TOUGH ON TUSKS
Nov 2015 : 36kg of ivory worth HK$360,000 in tailor-made vest in luggage on flight from Harare, Zimbabwe via Dubai
Sept 2015: 16kg of cut ivory worth HK$160,000 stashed in a vest and underpants in luggage on flight from Nigeria
Sept 2015: 51kg of cut ivory worth HK$510,000 hidden beneath sawdust in airmail parcels from Zimbabwe, via Amsterdam
Aug 2015: 15kg of ivory products worth HK$150,000 in a tailor-made vest in luggage on flight from Nigeria, via Dubai
Apr 2015: 6kg of ivory products seized in backpack of baby-carrying mainland woman as she tried to enter Shenzhen. Stopped and arrested by mainland customs
June 2014: 790kg of raw ivory tusks and semi-finished ivory products worth HK$7.9 million seized from hand luggage of 15 transiting air passengers from Angola, en route for Cambodia
May 2014: First batch of the Hong Kong’s 30-tonne stockpile of seized illegal ivory incinerated by the government, in symbolic move aimed at boosting fight against the illicit trade
Sept 2013: 769kg of ivory tusks worth HK$11.5 million seized in three shipping containers labelled “soybeans” from western Africa, via Malaysia
July 2013: 2,200kg of ivory tusks worth HK$17.5 million hidden in a shipping container labelled “wood planks” from Togo, via Morocco destined for Shandong province
May 2013: 300kg of ivory tusks worth HK$3 million seized from cargo container from Burundi marked “spare parts” . Bound for Singapore
Jan 2013: 1,300kg of raw ivory tusks worth HK$10.6 million seized in shipping container marked “architectural stones” from Kenya, via Malaysia
Oct 2012: 3,800kg of ivory tusks worth HK$26.7 million in shipping container marked “plastic scrap” and “borlotti beans”
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1906503/illegal-ivory-trade-hong-kong-moves-centre-stage