China’s craze for ivory has killed 100,000 African elephants in last three years

China is crazy for ivory and in order to whet its appetite, thousands of elephants are being killed every year. The price for the precious ivory goods have surged in China, as has the number of poached elephants.
As indicated by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, nearly 100,000 African elephants have been killed for their ivory in just the past three years and that is a dangerous trend. In his opinion, the African elephants could disappear from the wild within a generation if China does not mend its ways and takes action to put an end the sale of ivory.
This greed for ivory luxury goods have been fueled by the nouveau-riche Chinese consumers who have developed a taste for such exotic items. The wholesale price of raw tusks has tripled in just four years since 2010, whereas the retail prices for finished ivory have increased exponentially.
Incidentally, the retail prices in Beijing have increased more than 13 times since 2002. The teams of researchers had visited 275 retail outlets in Beijing and Shanghai and discovered that the number of illegal shops far outnumbers the number of legal ones. On a rough estimate, at least 78% of the ivory shops in Beijing were illegal, while in Shanghai it was at least 89%.