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Listening to BBC News the other night I learned about the following:

1.  95 %decline in elephant population during the past century in Africa due to illegal poaching (i.e., kill elephant for their tusks)

2.  The poachers get US$50/kg for the tusks

3.  The total retail value of these tusks on the world market is US$90 million  with China and Vietnam the major importers

4.  While there are laws against exporting elephant tusk from  Africa, and as I recallalso laws against import of elephant tusk by China,  corruption by and bribes to custom officials on both side are rampant.

From these reports one can deduce some conclusions:

   A.   Wikipedia information on total number of elephants killed in Africa  to be 30,000 per year estimated. It won’t take long before elephants will be  extinct. And this will be a tragedy according to  the World Wildlife Fund.

   B.  Some of the import to Vietnam probably are in turn smuggled  cross the Vietnam-Yunanborder into China. It is difficult to imagine  a large demand for ivory in Vietnam comparable to China.

   C. I estimate a pair of elephant tusks to beabout 40 kgs. This means African  countries receives a total of US$66 M for exporting the 30,000+  tusks.

   D.Take the sixty-six Million dollars  as material cost  and  using the  usual production  multiplier    of 2 give  a retail  value of 132 Million dollars  which is consistent with  the  independently   reported retail figure of 90 million dollars (my guesstimate of 40Kg/pair of tusk may be little off).

E.  This means somewhere between 30-66 million dollars are used  for bribing    custom official.

F.  The poachers claim this is a victimless crime except for the elephants and elephants are destroying neighboring farms. For survival they are justified in doing the  killing. Besides why is this different from killing of ox, sheep and chicken due to  demand for human consumption (of course these animals are not going extinct  due  to breeding).

This state of affairs will continue since no one considers this as important in the great scheme of world affairs. How many people care if elephants become  extinct when they are worried about their own survival  or ivory collectors  for their own pleasure. Readers can draw their own conclusions about this.

Note added 5/5/2016: See earlier related article of mine http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-792043.html