The Ivory Game

Shetani is a notorious Tanzanian poacher featured in the documentary who orchestrated large-scale elephant slaughter. He hired hitmen to kill elephants and smuggled massive quantities of ivory, with some collections weighing up to 3000 kg. His operations were responsible for approximately 10,000 elephant deaths, making him one of the most destructive poachers in Africa.

The documentary opens with a nighttime sting operation in Tanzania specifically targeting Shetani, establishing the scale of his criminal enterprise from the start.

The massive price difference reflects the entire illegal supply chain. Poachers in Africa earn approximately $7 per kilogram for raw ivory, which then passes through multiple intermediaries, smugglers, wholesale dealers, and retailers, each adding markup before reaching Chinese consumers at $3000 per kilogram. This enormous profit margin creates powerful financial incentives for organized criminal networks.

The documentary explicitly contrasts these figures early in the film to explain the economic drivers fueling poaching.

The Chinese government permits licensed dealers to sell up to 5 tons of ivory, which creates a legal loophole that illegal traders exploit. Licensed dealers can claim their ivory came from legal sources, making it nearly impossible for authorities to distinguish between legal and illegal ivory. This blurring of lines between legal and illegal trade significantly complicates enforcement efforts.

Andrea Crosta and Hongxiang Huang's undercover investigation in China directly encounters this regulatory complication.

Electric fences serve as physical barriers around protected areas and elephant habitats, preventing both poachers from entering and elephants from wandering into conflict zones where they might be killed or destroy local crops. Ian Craig has championed this approach for decades as a proactive conservation strategy that reduces poaching incidents before they occur.

The documentary shows Ian Craig's collaboration with conservationists to track migrating herds and highlights how fences facilitate safe elephant migration routes.

Andrea Crosta from Wildleaks and journalist Hongxiang Huang conducted a risky undercover operation in China, secretly recording ivory dealers who boasted about bypassing regulations and illegally importing ivory from Africa. They gathered damning evidence including hidden camera footage and dealer admissions, which they compiled to present to authorities in hopes of prompting an ivory trade ban.

The documentary builds tension as Huang and Crosta face perilous situations while gathering evidence against major players in the ivory market.

Scientists predict elephants could face extinction within 15 years if governments worldwide do not take immediate action because 150,000 elephants have been slaughtered in just five years, reducing African populations from 100,000 to 50,000. At this rate of decline, remaining populations cannot sustain themselves, and without urgent intervention, elephants will disappear from the wild.

The documentary's opening statistics about mass slaughter establish the urgency that culminates in this dire warning.

While male elephants typically have larger tusks, females and calves also have tusks, and poachers kill them indiscriminately for any ivory they can yield. The documentary shows a heartbreaking scene where Craig Millar discovers an entire family of elephants, including females and calves, brutally slain, demonstrating that poachers show no regard for age or gender when harvesting tusks.

This emotional moment underscores the ruthlessness of poachers and serves as a turning point highlighting the indiscriminate nature of the slaughter.

In parts of China and Asia, ivory has traditionally been valued as a luxury material for carved artwork, jewelry, and decorative items that signify wealth and status. This cultural demand creates a lucrative market that drives the illegal ivory trade, with Chinese consumers willing to pay thousands of dollars per kilogram for tusks despite international bans.

The documentary explicitly connects the demand for ivory as status symbols in Asian cultures to the supply-driven poaching in Africa.

Craig Millar heads security for the Big Life Foundation in Kenya, focusing on preventing poaching before it occurs rather than reacting after elephants are killed. He patrols protected areas, responds to poaching threats, and often confronts local communities whose crops are raided by elephants, highlighting the complex human-wildlife conflict that complicates conservation efforts.

His work represents the frontline defense against poaching that the documentary follows alongside the investigative and policy efforts.

The undercover investigation in China and Hong Kong revealed that illegal ivory trade operates openly despite official bans, with dealers openly boasting about their ability to circumvent regulations and import ivory from Africa. The investigation exposed how the illegal market functions with relative impunity, connected to organized crime networks that profit from Africa's elephant slaughter.

This parallel narrative to the African anti-poaching efforts demonstrates the global nature of the ivory crisis.