Although China announced on Thursday that it would ban the import of ivory for one year, the independent Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) described Beijing's move as just window dressing with little impact on slowing down the poaching of African elephants for their tusks.

Shruti Suresh, campaigner of the London-based EIA, said a temporary ban would only make rich Chinese desire for more of ivory and at the same time stimulate the demand for illegal ivory laundering, reports the New York Times.

Like Us on Facebook

China's State Forestry Administration, the regulator of the country's wildlife commerce, published on Thursday on its website the notice that it has temporarily stopped the issuance of import permits for ivory carvings obtained since 1975.

That was the year that the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species took effect.

While China believes the one-year ban would allow authorities to evaluate the prohibition's effectiveness, a research in 2014, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that a moratorium would not slow down the killing of the pachyderm. In the last three years, 100,000 African elephants were culled for their tusks.

Meanwhile, while there is an import ban, China's legal domestic ivory industry would continue to operate.

The moratorium even resulted in higher prices for the ivory and provided for a legal way to hide the imported tusks illegally brought into the country by licensed carving factories and retail outlets.

The Convention allowed China to import 68 tons of African ivory in 2008 and got the approval for a domestic trade on the guise that it would save elephants by undercutting poachers with the availability of approved inventory.

But Save the Elephants points out that rather than save the beast from poachers, prices of ivory in China tripled in the last four years since 2010.

Chinese love ivory out of the belief that the elephant tusk has medicinal properties.

It is often given as presents in the form of carved sculptures or jewelry.

TagsElephant ivory