2011 . The true figure may even be double that . Meanwhile , last year saw an estimated 34.7 tons of illegal ivory seized globally . It is hard to tell whether making the sale of ivory legal actually helped . Many governments did not report their seizures , so when it was time to judge the Japan experiment the information was off . The cases from the U . S . and Europe made up most of the count but where it matters most in Asia , less than 10 percent of the seizures were reported . China is the biggest ivory smuggler in the world . There are lots of signs that ivory is actually becoming more popular in China . They have more stores that sell it as well as more places that train people to carve ivory , including universities like the Beijing University of Technology . There is a lot of corruption in governments and officials sometimes take bribes to ' look the other way '. If guards do decide to confront the poachers , their lives are in danger . Poachers don ’ t mind murdering people , just like they do the defenseless animals . Governments that were against to the ivory trade ban in the first place do not put much effort into stopping elephant poaching in their countries . Conclusion
Interpol uses a formula to estimate how many elephants are actually smuggled . They assume that they only collect ten percent of the illegal ivory . Each