Hong Kong ivory trade faces uncertain future as bans loom

Wong Lai-ngan hunches over a battered workbench, his electric rotary tool whining as he carves two phoenixes facing each other into a smooth white tusk.

Decades ago, Wong’s canvas would have been elephant ivory. But since a 1990 ban on international trading, Hong Kong’s dwindling tribe of ivory carvers has switched to tusks of extinct woolly mammoths.

The decline of the city’s once-flourishing ivory business is set to speed up after the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese governments announced in December plans to restrict local ivory trading. Wildlife activists hailed the news, saying domestic markets must be phased out to reduce the demand for tusks driving an epidemic of poaching that is decimating Africa’s elephants.

It also signals the end for Hong Kong’s ivory craftsmen and traders.