Dear Iain,

In 2014 and 15, I was honoured to come visit you in Samburu, Kenya, where you showed me the beauty of elephants roaming freely in the wild. What you have been doing with your Save the Elephants is truly remarkable and very enlightening to me. The way you have dedicated your life’s work on saving these wonderful creatures was inspiring to say the least. You also showed me the carcasses of two dead elephants, victims of poaching to supply the bloody ivory trade. I cannot be certain that the stolen tusks of those illegally-killed animals would not ended up on a store shelf in Hong Kong, and then purchased by tourists.

As of last Tuesday, the first of May 2018, the Hong Kong ivory ban finally became law! Of course this is good news for elephants. As you know, I, along with WildAid, and other NGOs have been lobbying the government for this critical law change to happen for the last five years.

After all, we all know that most legal market for ivory is a front for illegal trade. I am so glad our government finally recognized this, because up to 30,000 elephants a year are still being slaughtered for the ivory trade.

In fact, the unsustainable killing of elephants and other African wildlife carries on regardless of whatever law changes happen on the other side of the world, which means we cannot rest.

As you sadly know, in Kenya and Tanzania in the last year, two prominent conservationists and our good friends, whose work directly threatened the ivory poaching syndicates, Esmond Martin and Wayne Lotter, were brutally murdered in cold blood. This shows how the ivory trade will stop at nothing to ensure the blood money keeps flowing.

In the last ten years wildlife trafficking and poaching around the world has reached such high levels, and this is pushing many species towards extinction. So although the Hong Kong ivory ban is a very good start, there is still much work to be done here to stamp out the illegal wildlife trade. What's important now is that the government starts treating wildlife crime as serious crime.

Wildlife trafficking has grown and grown, encouraged not only by the increasing value of its products and also the high profit or low risk nature of the crime. In fact, wildlife crime is now considered to be the fourth most profitable transnational crime in the world after drugs smuggling, weapons smuggling and human trafficking. Yet not a single illegal wildlife trade kingpins has ever been caught and tried in Hong Kong.

Iain, the problem is that our current laws are not strong enough on their own to provide a real deterrent to the wildlife criminals.

Court cases in Hong Kong involving ivory and rhino horn smuggling are getting ever more frequent. These cases, where the so-called “mules” are caught by Customs red-handed with ivory or rhino horn at our airport, are not the work of a just few guys hiding contraband in their backpacks. They are in fact the work of organised criminal networks who are skilled at moving valuable, but illegal, goods across the world for huge profits.

It breaks my heart that most of these products are from animal species on the brink of extinction. It's ironic, but being close to extinction makes their value keep spiraling higher and higher. I'm sure you know, but isn't it shocking that rhino horn is now more valuable than gold and cocaine? And just last month in Kenya, we lost the last male Northern White Rhino, which means that extinction is real and it's caused by poaching. It makes me so angry as this is happening right now under our noses, and is preventable. Everyone must stop buying ivory and rhino horn!

On the positive side, the international trend now is towards treating wildlife trafficking as a serious crime like gun running, drug trafficking and financial crimes.

So what needs to happen in Hong Kong now, is that the government should put our wildlife laws under OSCO, which is our Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance. If they can do this, it will ensure that the Kingpins of wildlife crime can be properly investigated and prosecuted, not just the “mules”.

Wildlife crime is BIG business, and its profits are often re-invested back into other criminal or terrorist activities. That mean combating Wildlife crime can also contribute to a safer world.

But let's talk about elephants again. The best news for them is that China announced its full ivory ban at the end of 2017. It's now illegal to buy or sell ivory in China, which is great! And earlier this month, the UK also announced important commitments to closing down their ivory markets. Here in Hong Kong, the situation is improving rapidly. Pre-Convention ivory imports from the European Union will be banned in September. That's a much needed fix, as it closes down a seriously big loophole where some European and Hong Kong ivory traders were mixing legal old ivory with illegal new ivory from freshly poached elephants, and selling to the public.

Hong Kong's ivory ban not only restores our city's reputation in Africa, but also amongst our city's young students who so dearly love elephants and want the chance to see them when they grow up, not just in a picture book. As you know, Iain, time is running out for elephants and rhinos, so we must do all that we can to save these wonderful creatures from extinction. As a Hong Kong Legislative Council member, I will continue to lobby our Government to do more and better by legislating stricter policies protecting wildlife, and I will try my best to make sure those existing laws of ours which are already in force to protect wildlife are properly enforced.

Thank you Iain, and let’s continue to work together to protect wildlife!

Elizabeth