The growing black market for ivory in countries like Vietnam, China, Thailand and Japan has led to rising numbers of poached elephants and seizures of illegal ivory in Africa.

The growing black market for ivory in countries like Vietnam, China, Thailand and Japan has led to rising numbers of poached elephants and seizures of illegal ivory in Africa.

Ivory is now worth more in weight than gold on the international market, so poaching has become an industrialized business.

Many environmental and diplomatic organizations are involved in trying to save elephants by banning the ivory trade between Africa and Asia.

But because of growing demand, poaching continues to be a major problem, that might eventually lead to the extinction of elephants.

According to Mary Rice, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency: “In the past five or six years, the poaching of elephants has gone off the scale. I think it will be dramatically higher than 30,000 this year, based on the large number of ivory seizures we have seen this year, which exceeds all previous records, and the high carcass count generally.”

Many activists have criticized the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which started in 1975 as a way to protect endangered animals and officially banned the trade of ivory, but has been inconsistent about enforcing the international agreements.