Ex-undercover investigator urges more fellow Chinese to fight ivory trade

Undercover investigator Huang Hongxiang could almost smell the grim consequences when his bag carrying a hidden camera was opened by a villager in Vietnam, where almost everyone in the hamlet had a finger in the pie of the illegal ivory trade.

Huang, 29, was in the country last year to document how rampant the illegal business was by meeting smugglers and wearing his pinhole camera.

“If he ever looked closer, things could have been very bad,” the avowed animal-lover said as he stacked up three smartphones to illustrate the gadget’s size.

That was the most dangerous of Huang’s encounters during his career in wildlife crime investigation dating to 2013. His exploits took him to more than a dozen countries spanning Africa, Asia and Latin America.

But Huang retired from the field after deciding to show his face in The Ivory Game, a documentary made last year depicting the blood-soaked paths of elephant poaching and ivory trading. The film was co-produced by movie star and UN climate change ambassador Leonardo DiCaprio.

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