A newspaper story about the impact of the ivory trade has gone viral in China, raising awareness among millions of Chinese, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

 

The story, published November 15 in Southern Weekly, has been shared widely across Chinese web sites and social media, according to the conservation group.

 

"The total views of the original Southern Weekly Tweets and Retweets on Weibo (China’s Twitter/Facebook hybrid) exceeded 10 million. Most of these “netizens,” or members of the Chinese online public, were from Tier 1 Chinese cities (Beijing, Chongqing, Guangdong), the most significant consumers of ivory," said WCS in a statement.

 

"The article was reposted on 24 online discussion forums or Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) including Mop and Tianya, two of the most popular in China. Thousands of comments were generated on the Tianya BBS forum alone. Overall over 5,000 comments on the article were posted on Weibo, BBS fora, and other websites."

 

The story received wide play outside environmental news, being picked up on finance sites, according to WCS.

 

"This represents an important shift for the topic of ivory from the specialist environmental pages to the mainstream debate," said the group.