Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Syrian and North African elephant populations were reduced to extinction, probably due to the demand for ivory in the Classical world. This early collapse of elephant herds set a precedent for the centuries of exploitation that followed, turning a natural resource into a commodity that shaped economies and empires.
China announced they would phase out the legal domestic manufacture and sale of ivory products in May 2015. In September of the same year, China and the U.S. announced they would enact a nearly complete ban on the import and export of ivory.
Deep River and Ivoryton in Connecticut became the centers of ivory milling in the 1860s, in particular, due to the demand for ivory piano keys. Up to 90 percent of the ivory imported into the United States was processed at one time in Connecticut.
The global ivory trade leads to the slaughter of up to 35,000 elephants a year in Africa, a number that has fluctuated but remains a constant threat to the species. The annual poaching mortality rate peaked at over 10% in 2011 and fell to below 4% by 2017.
Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks and teeth of animals that consists mainly of dentin and contains structures of mineralised collagen. It has a measured hardness of 35 on the Vickers scale, exceeding that of bone.