Reducing Demand for Ivory in China

WildAid was proud to announce that it will be an NGO member of the new United States Wildlife Trafficking Alliance, announced by the White House on August 6, 2015. This partnership has three primary objectives:

• Raise the public’s awareness of the scope of the wildlife trafficking crisis, including the illegal trade’s devastating impact on 
  elephants, rhinos, tigers and other irreplaceable species, and illegal traffickers’ role in funding global corruption and terrorism;
• Reduce consumer demand for wildlife and wildlife products (WildAid’s core organizational mission); and
• Mobilize companies to adopt best practices to insure that their goods and services are not being utilized by illegal wildlife traffickers, and to assist in raising public awareness and reducing demand.

On June 30, academy award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o returned to her native Kenya and announced that she will advocate globally for elephants with international conservation organization WildAid. Ms. Nyong’o spent time in Amboseli National Park with the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's Nairobi elephant orphanage, meeting with local conservationists and filming messages for international distribution in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United States. These messages are designed to raise awareness of the elephant-poaching crisis and to reduce the demand for ivory in consuming markets. 

Earlier in June, award-winning singer-songwriter Alikiba has become an ambassador for the campaign. "I'm honoured to lend any support that I can to this effort to protect our wildlife,” Alikiba said. "Our beautiful elephants must be allowed to live — free and wild — instead of ending up as a carving on somebody's coffee table." This came as Tanzania's Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, in association with WildAid and the African Wildlife Foundation, launched a new public awareness campaign to inform the public about the severe poaching crisis currently facing Tanzania and to generate widespread support among civil society for the protection of elephants and other wildlife species. The campaign will use television, radio, social media, newspapers and magazines, billboards and videos in public spaces in order to reach as many members of the public as possible, including the residents of remote rural villages. 

If you'd like to stay up to date with WildAid's campaign and ambassadors, please join our email list to receive our monthy newsletter and additional campaign updates!

Links:

• Lupita Nyong'o joins WildAid as Ambassador
• Alikiba "Poaching steals from us all" in Tanzania
• WildAid joins US Wildlife Trafficking Alliance