Ivory crackdown efforts sharpened

Record ivory seizures - combined with a Chinese crackdown on illegal wildlife trafficking - could mark a turning point in global efforts to save the African elephant.

Twenty-five years have passed since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora banned the ivory trade in 1989. Yet the circumstances of African elephants remain dire.

Poachers slaughter elephants for tusks that feed a global black market. Clandestine blood ivory helps to finance terrorism and criminal syndicates such as the al-Shabaab's 2013 Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi, Kenya, and Joseph Kony's guerrilla Lord's Resistance Army in central Africa.