Prayers of Buddhist monks and Hindi priests rose in the air for the hundreds of thousands of elephants slaughtered for their ivory as an industrial crusher came to life in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok. Over two tons of elephant tusks, carved ivory, and trinkets—most of it from elephants poached a continent away in Africa—made its way into the machine that ground the ivory into chips.
The solemn ceremony to destroy Thailand’s illegal ivory follows a number of important laws the country passed to crack down on the illegal ivory trade.
The Chor Chang campaign brought international attention to Thailand’s illegal ivory crisis and added worldwide citizen pressure to the official demands for change by CITES. In response, the Thai government took action, creating a revised national ivory action plan, banning all trade and sale of ivory from African elephants, and passing a tighter law for regulating the trade of legal ivory. When he introduced the National Elephant Ivory Act, Thailand’s prime minister, General Prayuth, noted the campaign’s influence.