Photo

The Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming has for years lent his renown to wildlife conservation. In 2006 he took up the campaign against killing sharks for their fins, considered a delicacy in China. More recently, he has taken up the cause of elephants and rhinos, which are hunted for their ivory and horns.

In August 2012, he traveled to the African savanna for the first time to witness the destruction wrought by poaching, and returned last year to Kenya. Now he is ready to share what he saw with his compatriots, in a documentary film, “The End of the Wild,” and a companion book.

At a presentation of the film in Beijing last week, Mr. Yao emphasized the special role of Chinese consumers, both in driving market demand for products from endangered animals and in curbing that demand.



“It is stunning what China has achieved in the past three decades economically, and at least some of us have emerged as winners,” he said in an interview. “But our purchasing power is straining the resources of the earth.”

The obsession of some Chinese with possessing rare ornaments or ingredients of questionable medical benefit “is costing lives thousands of kilometers away,” he said.

The film is the latest of Mr. Yao’s projects in partnership with WildAid, a nongovernmental organization devoted to stopping the illegal trade in wildlife. It shows him petting baby rhinos in Ol Pejeta Conservancy outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and examining the mutilated carcasses left behind by poachers in Namunyak, in northern Kenya.

“I believe that people who have seen those pictures will remember it,” Mr. Yao says in the film. In the interview he added, “I saw those dead bodies. And that smell, well, you won’t smell it watching the documentary.”

Ivory and rhinoceros horns are valued in China as status symbols, and conservationists warn that the huge demand in China is the primary force behind poaching and smuggling in Africa. In 2012 alone, 22,000 elephants were killed for their tusks across the continent, according to a monitoring program of Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Most of the smuggled ivory was destined for China.

WildAid estimates that 33,000 elephants are killed each year for their tusks, and that the rhinoceros population has been reduced by 95 percent lost over the last 40 years.

Photo

Mr. Yao said he learned about the human cost of poaching as well. As poachers arm themselves more heavily, law enforcement has struggled to catch up. In the film, a member of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy staff tells Mr. Yao that 24 Ol Pejeta rangers have been killed in the past couple of years.

“There’s a balance in nature that’s vital to all of us,” Mr. Yao said. “If we don’t do something to stop those species from dying out, one day it will be our turn to go.”

Mr. Yao, the 7-foot-6 former Houston Rockets center, has been a spokesman for WildAid’s campaigns in China since 2006, helping secure a broad audience for the organization’s slogan: “When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”

WildAid has credited Mr. Yao with helping reduce the demand for shark fin. The organization reported this month that sales and prices have declined. In the southern city of Guangzhou, the current center of China’s shark fin trade, sales were down 82 percent over the past two years, it said.

Over all, China is importing far less dried shark fin, customs data show — just over 40 tons last year, down from more than 108 tons in 2012.

The Chinese government’s campaign against official corruption and extravagant spending, as well as its ban last year on serving shark fin soup at official banquets, has clearly dented the trade. But WildAid believes that celebrity-led efforts have also helped change behavior. In a survey commissioned by the group last year, more than 60 percent of respondents said they had stopped eating shark fin in the past three years because of awareness campaigns like Mr. Yao’s.

“I was happy learning that our work was paying off,” Mr. Yao said. “We hope we can get similar results from our ivory and rhino horn campaign as well.”

Photo

The documentary, which runs 100 minutes, is being aired in China in two parts on CCTV-9, a channel of the state broadcaster. The first part was shown on Monday, and the second is scheduled for 10 p.m. on Sunday. A shorter, international version will be broadcast this fall on Animal Planet.

Peter Knights, WildAid’s executive director, said the group was hoping to reach a broad audience. “We want to have our stories told through Chinese eyes, through Yao Ming,” he said, “so it is not a bunch of Western conservationists saying, ‘Look, this is what’s happening.’ We hope it will open a few eyes.”

Mr. Yao said his visits to Africa had opened his own eyes. “I learned to see things in a different way as I let myself get involved in wildlife conservation and I saw a whole new world,” he said. “That’s growth.”