“When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”

WildAid’s mantra, translated into Chinese, has permeated China’s culture and society – a remarkable achievement in the mission to stamp out the US$10b illegal wildlife trade. In this two part interview with Peter Knights, WildAid’s Executive Director, I delve into what it will take to win the race for new Chinese thinking.
WildAid’s mission is to save endangered species that include elephants, rhino and tigers, by ending the illegal wildlife trade in our lifetime. It is the only organization with a laser focus on reducing the demand for these animal products, and they do this through public awareness campaigns featuring celebrity activists Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, Sir Richard Branson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and many more.
Working on a shoestring budget, WildAid are leveraging well over US$200 million in pro-bono media support, and reaching one billion people every week.
The most recent reports on WildAid’s shark fin campaigns in China show a demand reduction of up to 70% for shark fin soup, the result of appealing to people’s humanity. Did you know that millions of sharks are brutally killed each year for this soup? A third of all shark species are nearly extinct, but we can help save them.

“The response to poaching crises has been to increase enforcement – to escalate the war while only dealing with symptoms,” says Peter Knights. “Demand reduction defunds the war and deals with the root cause. If you hit the demand hard you break the back of the problem and make enforcement more affordable for the future.”
Ivory carries more social status than shark fin soup, and ironically Buddhist ivory carvings are seen as religious devotion. However a lot of Chinese people still believe tusks are sourced from elephants that die a natural death, while others believe elephants shed their tusks like stags shed their antlers.
Fuelled by the country’s economic boom, China accounts for about 70% of the illegal ivory trade, and there is obviously still a long way to go. But progress is imminent, and Knights is encouraged by the Chinese government being open to their citizens debating environmental issues.

“The big win so far is China carrying out the ivory crush and admitting for the first time publicly that they had a problem. Hong Kong followed and their top three retailers have pulled out of the trade.”

China licenses 35 ivory carving factories and 130 ivory retailers to sell ‘legal’ ivory obtained from the 2008 CITES sanctioned sale of ivory stockpiles from four African countries. However some legal operations have been caught out as fronts for smuggling, and other carving factories are not licensed at all. Calls to shut down the factories and distribution channels are routinely ignored in contradiction to the ongoing confiscated ivory stockpile burns. But the future is unwritten.

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