All photos via Hong Kong customs
There have been a few high-profile wildlife trafficking busts recently, including the arrest of a ivory kingpin in Togo. But a seizure in Hong Kong might just take the cake: Customs officials nabbed 1,120 ivory tusks, 13 rhino horns, and five leopard skins, a haul the AP pegs as being worth $5.3 million.
No one was arrested in the seizure, which was Hong Kong’s fourth big bust this year. Curiously, it’s unclear where the shipment was headed. Normally busts are made on shipments headed through Hong Kong towards mainland China, which is the largest market for wildlife parts in the world. But this time, the shipment was headed in the opposite direction.
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Elephant tusks and rhino horns are neither portable nor light, and the whole shipment weighed nearly 5,000 pounds. So how does a trafficker ship them from source countries in Africa to buyers in China and southeast Asia? Well, by pretending they’re logs, of course:
A total of 21 crates were found, all hidden as part of a shipment of “red cam process wood” from Nigeria that Hong Kong officials say they were tracking following an intelligence tip.
The tusks, which represent 560 dead elephants, were polished, wrapped in plastic, and packed in crates. Pretty much showroom ready.
Remember, ivory is highly prized in China as a symbol of luxury. That demand is fueling record levels of poaching in Africa, with militant groups getting into the game to take advantage of skyrocketing prices.
The bust obviously doesn’t bring the elephants back to life, but it’s incredibly important because once the ivory makes its way into China, it’s easily laundered.
China—along with Singapore and, until recently, Thailand—still allows legal sale of pre-ban ivory. The problem is that ivory is hard to date and easy to make look antique, which means that it’s very difficult for officials to check whether or not ivory has been recently harvested.
Combine that with corruption and a general malaise towards ivory restrictions, and that means plenty of illegal ivory makes its way unhindered through Chinese markets. Hong Kong customs, which has a long history of big seizures, is a rare barrier to trafficking in the region.
While the horns were less numerous, they’re still shockingly valuable. South Africa’s rhinos have been decimated in recent years, and this year’s poaching rate is set to eclipse last year’s record of 668 killed.
Why are people killing rhinos? Their horns are shockingly valuable to consumers who believe they hold medicinal qualities. Large horns like the ones in the back row in the photo above can fetch deep into six figures on the black market.
As if that wasn’t enough, the shipment also included a few leopard pelts which, like tigers’, are prized by collectors. Leopard poaching has also been on the rise, even if it doesn’t get as much attention as elephant, rhino, tiger, and pangolin poaching. Curiously, leopard poaching’s growth has been fueled by religion, which is a fairly unique situation in the wildlife trafficking sphere.