The battle to save Kenya’s last 32,000 elephants may largely depend on a vague law in Vietnam, some 7,000 kilometres away.

As a result of China’s tougher stance against illegal ivory, Vietnam has now risen to become one of the world's biggest market for the illegal products.

Two researchers from Kenya visited the country’s expansive ivory markets and found that the amount of ivory on sale has increased by more than 600 per cent in the past eight years.

“Tusks are smuggled into Vietnam, nearly all from Africa, with only a few nowadays from domesticated and wild elephants on Laos and Vietnam,” Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin say in a report they compiled from their extensive research.

The report, Vietnam's Illegal Ivory Trade Threatens Africa's Elephants, was published by the Save The Elephants, a Nairobi-based organisation.

Lucy and Martin found a whopping 242 open outlets with 16,099 ivory items on display for retail sales in Ho Chi Minh city, Buon Ma Thuot town, Hanoi and surrounding villages.

This is compared to 2,444 items counted in a report published in 2008.

“There may be no other country in the world involving the combined illegal imports of new raw tusks and illegal exports of the final products to be as active as Vietnam today,” Lucy and Martin say in their report.

There is one key reason for Vietnam’s rise in trade – China’s increased crackdown on illegal ivory sales and promises to reduce the domestic trade following huge international criticism.

Vietnam itself is a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), which bans the international trade in ivory.

But dealers exploit a loophole in the national law that allows ivory crafted before 1992 to be legally sold within the country. If officials tried to confiscate illegal ivory, traders technically pass it off as pre-1992 stock.

“Nearly all the ivory items for sale in Vietnam are new or recently carved and illegal,” the researchers note.

The report found that nearly all these items are carved from raw tusks smuggled from Africa, in contrast to the 2008 research conducted by Dan Stiles who found the majority of tusks to have originated from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. This shift now presents a major threat to Africa’s elephants.

Lucy and Esmond first presented their findings in July in Nairobi.

They warned that failure by countries to enforce the laws is slowly pushing the African elephants to the brink of collapse.

"Two thirds of ivory are leaving through the ports of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar going to China and Vietnam," Martin said.

Africa loses between 20,000 to 30,000 elephants every year and conservationists warn if the trend continues, the mammals will go extinct by 2030.

Environment Cabinet Secretary Prof Judi Wakhungu says Kenya lost 164 elephants to poachers in 2014 and 96 in 2015. The country also lost 35 rhinos in 2014 and 11 in 2015.

“Lackadaisical law enforcement at both Vietnamese and Chinese customs at the land borders has enabled the illegal ivory trade to flourish, and the illegal killing of elephants in Africa continues unabated. The Vietnamese government has done little to prevent ivory cyber trafficking, with ivory items openly for sale on online chats,” said Vigne and Martin.

For instance, the number of ivory carvers in Vietnam has ballooned and even though they earn only US$200-400 a month (compared with US$875-2,000 in China), the job is seen as lucrative.

The researchers claim Chinese tourists buy 75 per cent of the carvings, which are never confiscated at the border. The two countries share a poorly monitored 700km land border.

“The key change,” Lucy says, “was the expansion of the ivory trade in villages south of Hanoi. An increase in the number of Asian tourists in the Central Highlands area of Buon Ma Thuot, for example, has driven up demand causing the ivory business to flourish as it offers a relatively quick way to make money.”

The illegally obtained ivory is usually in the form of small tusks or tusks cut into pieces of one to three kilogrammes while the end products in most cases are pendants, mass produced jewellery, and other small items that are easily transportable.

During their study last year, the researchers found that skulls, bones and tail hairs of Asian elephants were on sale in addition to ivory.

Substitutes for ivory in Vietnam include special woods like mulberry wood, and stones, but only one tiny item made of mammoth ivory was seen for sale.

Although a few signs to try to reduce demand for rhino horns were seen, no signs or posters against illegal ivory trade were observed.

“A national strategic approach on ivory to improve law enforcement and awareness is lacking within the country. There is also inadequate global collaboration to tackle the illegal ivory trade. This is despite the fact that Vietnam was flagged as a significant transit country for ivory at the 16th CITES Conference of the Parties held in Bangkok in 2013,” the authors say.

They advise that the main challenge is exposing the ‘big bosses’ operating in Africa and Vietnam rather than tackling the smaller players who can simply be substituted if caught.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder and CEO of Save the Elephants, stressed the need to close down illegal markets.

“We have seen great gains made against the ivory trade over the past year, with a federal ban in the US, a time-line announced by Hong Kong and a presidential commitment from China. We must work together with governments to prevent markets from springing up elsewhere like Vietnam.”

He said it is important to close new ivory markets that are opening in Asia.

He calls the study “a warning that when you think you are on the verge of solving a problem, it may shift across…the borders of other states.

“In this case, the problem now of illegal ivory-trading has shifted across the border with Vietnam.”

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