Dec. 5, 2005 — A taste for ivory among members of China's exploding middle class poses a serious threat to elephants in Central Africa where poaching is on the rise amid a surge in demand, experts said last week.

"The Chinese economy and (its) enormous economic growth pose a huge threat to African forest elephants," said Richard Leakey, the renowned anthropologist and former director of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

"The elephant population could disappear in 30 years if the market is not controlled and law enforcement is not improved," he told a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya, where a report on the growth in the illegal ivory trade was released.

Between 2,000 and 4,500 elephants are being killed for their tusks each year in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon to supply Asian and African ivory markets, the report said.

Commissioned by British-based Care for the Wild International and Save the Elephants, the report said China's demand for ivory is the greatest threat to Africa's jumbos.

Three-quarters of the 5,000 to 12,000 elephants poached worldwide every year are killed in Africa, where illegal hunting is growing despite tightened restrictions and government vows to stamp out the trade.

Esmond Martin and Daniel Stiles, elephant experts who conducted the two-year study on which the report is based, said China is now the largest importer of illegal African ivory.

"China is the number one importer of elephants and most of those being poached come from Central Africa," Martin said, predicting catastrophe should the rising Chinese middle class "ever adopt ivory as a fashion number."

"The resulting demand could trigger a price rise that could destabilize the elephant situation in Africa and Asia," he added.

In the course of their study, Martin and Stiles found 297,000 pieces of ivory for sale in markets worldwide, more than half of which were in Asia — mainly in Thailand and China.

Since a 1989 ban on trade in ivory and recent pressure to crack down on illicit trafficking, the Chinese government has shuttered a number of ivory-carving factories, they said.

But at least one government-run factory, in Xian, still exists, employing more than 15 carvers and the initiative has driven the trade further underground, they said.

About 300 ivory carvers are still believed to be operating in China, many from their homes, said Martin, who in an earlier report accused Sudanese militia of slaughtering large numbers of elephants in volatile Central Africa to supply ivory markets in North Africa and Asia.

Despite the criticism directed at China for its role in the illegal trade, the experts said African nations themselves needed to do more to rein it in.

More than a third of the illegal ivory pieces discovered were found in Africa, where carving remains a lucrative profession, they said.

Nigel Hunter, who runs an elephant protection program under the auspices of the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), urged further consideration for African-based ivory markets.

"African carvers' consumption represents a significant quantity of the demand," Hunter said. "We have to bring African markets under control. If you can do that... you have a chance."