The fight against China's ivory trade has a big advocate -- Yao Ming.
Ivan Watson tells us what the former NBA player is doing to curb China's appetite for ivory.
One of the biggest creatures in the animal kingdom, protected by one of the biggest men in China.
When the buying stops, the killing can, too.
Former basketball star Yao Ming is arguably China's most famous athlete.
Since retiring from the NBA, he has also become a passionate spokesman for the wildlife conservation group WildAid,
campaigning to stop the slaughter of elephants and rhinos in Africa.
Why [are] those animals being poached? Why are those guys after those animals?
It's all because there's a market here in China, in Asia or anywhere else.
People are buying those ivory and horns.
China is the world's biggest market for ivory.
There are dozens of legal companies here that sell licensed ivory.
But the demand from China's growing middle class is also driving the black market smuggling of illegal elephant tusk into the country.
It's not just elephant ivory.
This is a box of traditional Chinese medicine that's advertised to include one key ingredient -- rhinoceros horn.
Now, some Chinese believe that this has incredible healing properties, that it's almost a wonder drug.
And that's why 20 years after the Chinese government banned its sale, rhino horn is still a valuable commodity on the black market.
Yao Ming is trying to teach his countrymen that these animals are more valuable alive than cut up as trophies in the living room.
The money will [is] making people turning [turn] to a dark side to doing [do] something terrible, like what I saw over there.
The athlete traveled to Africa with WildAid and witnessed the poaching of these giant creatures firsthand.
We saw a couple of elephants' and rhinos' carcasses. It's very ugly.
Because the animal is so big, you can't kill [it] by just a single bullet so they sometimes you'll find a lot of bullet holes on their [its] body.
It's almost like... make me feel like genocide.
Yao Ming's environmental activism began several years ago with an appeal to stop Chinese from eating shark fin soup,
a delicacy that's devastating the world's shark population.
He says there was resistance at first,
but now it appears many Chinese are listening to the basketball player's message.
The price of a shark fin soup has almost decreased 50 percent.
The price has gone down.
The price is down. Of course, you can imagine, because of prices down, there is not much of a demand.
Less demand, perhaps, because Yao Ming is now playing defense for endangered species.