Word: elephantitis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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K.T. Wang, 66, a businessman with silver hair and impeccable manners, is the dean of Hong Kong's ivory trade. He has never been to Africa, and the only elephant he has seen was in the Paris zoo. Yet he is a major conduit for ivory entering both Hong Kong...
By the time even registered ivory reaches Japan, the link with Africa is all but lost. On the wall of the Fuso Trading Co. in downtown Tokyo is a photograph of a lone elephant standing in silhouette against a red sunset. "We don't know exactly what country the ivory...
Until the early 1980s, the flow of undocumented ivory into Japan went virtually unchecked. The country was awash in bogus documents used to launder ivory smuggled out of Africa. International protests grew, and Japan's traders began to realize that the extinction of the elephant would eventually put them out...
Will the secretariat's campaign to block the ban succeed? Probably not, since the international momentum to do something for the elephant is strong. But little is certain. "I foresee chaos," says a spokesman for Botswana. In the final days leading up to the meeting, lobbying efforts by both sides...
So the future of the trade depends in large part on Hong Kong and Japan, the big consumers. Officials of both places have expressed deep concern at the catastrophic losses to Africa's herds and have vowed to place the preservation of the elephant ahead of the interests of the...