The illegal trade in "protected" wildlife and their body parts is a multibillion-dollar-a-year business that is quickly supplanting the drug trade and gunrunning as organized crime’s most profitable venture. Nothing embodies this trend better than ivory . Despite more than 20 years of trade bans, illegal ivory still floods the world market and brings ever-increasing prices from consumers in China, Japan and the U.S., putting African and Asian elephants in constant danger of poaching and extinction. [More]