The World from PRX

Endangered Elephants

In 1989, an international ban on selling ivory was heralded as a victory for elephant conservation. But nearly two decades later, the ivory trading industry remains in tact. In 2002, authorities confiscated six and a half tons of ivory in the largest seiz

Twenty years after an international treaty banning the trade of ivory, ivory smuggling is alive and well. Samuel Wasser of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington tells host Steve Curwood why the 1989 ban on ivory has failed and what can be done to end the slaughter of the world’s largest terrestrial mammal.