Science alert has made some excellent new findings in the field of science and humanities and on their blog they have written an article about China announcing that it will ban all of their trade on Ivory by the end of the year 2017 if all goes to plan. If this does indeed go to plan, then China will be turning its back on hundreds of years of trade but moving in a positive direction regarding foreign relations with nations in African and the Western world.

This year (2017) may as well be known as the year of the rooster according to the Chinese zodiac, but with this accomplishment planned then, it may as well be called the year of the elephant.

Due to the colossal move, it will effectively ban all processing and trade of ivory by the end of 2017, with the first factories scheduled to shut down by the end of the month of March.

“China will gradually stop the processing and sales of ivories for commercial purposes by the end of 2017, “said the official Xinhua news agency using the government statement as a source of citation.

Some have even heralded the move as a real ‘game changer’ by organisations that care about the environment such as the World Wildlife Fund and Natural Resources Defence Council, seeing as China is one of the biggest global markets for ivory, where it’s used as a precious material in jewellery, furniture, and sometimes even rituals

Fewer than 500,000 African elephants exist in the wild the question then becomes if this can be enough to stop the poaching and raise the numbers of elephants with successful conservation efforts. With an estimated 20,000 elephants killed a year then the precious animal could be extinct within the next 20-25 years. To ensure this target is met then more has to be done.

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