Baraza

Category: Africa, China, Ivory, Kenya, Rhinoceros, elephants, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Jul 20 2009 | By: Maina

On Tuesday last week, Kenyan authorities seized a 300kg haul of elephant tusks and rhino horn hidden in coffins at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). This large haul, valued at approximately $ 1-million, is thought to have either come from Tanzania or South Africa and was headed for Laos. Officials of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) however speculate that the load’s final destination was indeed China, but through Laos, the de-facto ‘gateway to China’.

A previous haul of illegal ivory as reported on Baraza in April 2009

The KWS has been complaining about increasing ivory poaching since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) allowed a one-off sale of ivory from southern Africa to China and Japan.  The entry of China into the world trade in ivory was in itself a cause for alarm amongst many conservationists on account of what is viewed as China’s laissez-faire attitude towards wildlife - except the giant panda.  There have been reports from the KWS and other organizations in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa indicating that there is definitely a rise in poaching for ivory and rhino horn.

According to the KWS, the rise in ivory poaching is partly caused by the CITES declaration to allow minimal trade from southern Africa. They say that this declaration created the illusion that it was OK to trade in ivory. If the number of seizures of ivory being witnessed today is anything to go by, then the KWS are right: the CITES declaration is indeed responsible for this mess.

It’s not just elephant poaching that is a problem. Just the previous week, a report was made public that indicates that rhino poaching has reached a 15 year high. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN, and the global conservation organization WWF, and their affiliated wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, told a CITES committee in a recent meeting that poachers in Africa and Asia are killing as many as two to three animals a week in some areas to meet a growing demand for the horns. What is more worrying is that this poaching is no longer a subsistence activity but it has now evolved into organized crime similar to cocaine and small arms rackets.

Elephants and rhinos are in a very dire situation as this new wave of wanton decimation of the majestic creatures picks up pace. We are witnessing the inevitable extinction of - in the case of the rhino - an evolutionary relic that generations upon generations of humans have marveled at; and the total loss of - in the case of the elephant - the gentle intelligent giant that has been the centre of almost all mythology.

Sentimental values aside, these are ‘keystone’ species that shape the environment that they occur in. Keeping a balance in the ecology of their habitat, and therefore determining the biological diversity of these habitats. The looming departure of these two could permanently alter ecosystems - in the most part - for the worst.

Poaching can do that, and this is going to happen in our lifetime.

A solution has to be found. We first have to stop lying to ourselves that there can be any sustainable trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn. We have seen this with our own eyes. It’s never going to happen. Having realized that, governments should tighten the noose on illegal traffic routes, cut down the poachers on sight, and increase punishment for poaching offenders. China and it’s Asian friends will need to be re-educated.

Dr Richard Leakey, while he was the head of KWS, led an elephant anti-poaching campaign back in the mid-1980s which brought down a large number of poaching rings. It has been 20 years since the symbolic burning of  12 tonnes of ivory - then worth about $3 million and from approximately 2000 dead elephants - at the height of the campaign. Today, elephant population that had dropped from 167, 000 in 1973 to a paltry 16,000 in 1989, now stand at 32,ooo. These numbers could easily start falling if nothing is done about the recent upsurge in poaching. Current wildlife officials could learn from this and step up the fight against poachers on the local level, while all conservationists push for the total ban on trade in ivory and rhino horn.

The symbolic ivory burning in 1989

Again, China and the Asian world that still believes that rhino horn has medicinal value, and carvings from elephant ivory  are ‘cute’, needs re-education.

Tags: Africa, Asia, burning ivory, China, CITES, elephant, Ivory, KWS, poaching, rhino, rhino horn, richard leakey, wildlife trade

8 responses so far

Category: China | Date: Jul 14 2009 | By: paula

Well we’re in day 4 of this five day Society for Conservation Biology 23^rd Annual Meeting and I want to report on the BIG ISSUES that have been identified in some of the keynote addresses so far.

On Sunday a world renown botanist and environmental hero, Dr. Peter H. Raven started the conference by telling us how many species will survive the 21^st Century.

Dr Raven was born in China so he started by telling us that there are 1.3 million species in this country of which only 10% are named and a good half are endemic species. They are disappearing fast. Why? Because of rapid human population growth. 10,500 years ago there were only 3 to 4 million people in the world. That was only 400 generations ago. We will number 9 or 10 billion by the year 2050!

More alarming is that we are using resources faster than ever because of the growing middle class. This is especially true in India and China. For China it is estimated that the area needed to support the current population at the current rate, or China’s ecological footprint is twice the size of the country! He says that this is related to growing wealth, the enormous consumption of meat, and polluting cities (16 of the worlds most polluted cities are in China).

Check out this map from Worldmapper and look for your country – is your nation exceeding capacity? If it looks like it’s ballooning then it is!

According to Raven, we have already exceeded the worlds capacity to support ourselves by 30%. That’s like saying we are using a third more than the planet Earth can support us in a sustainable way. But what’s most disturbing is that the doubling of the worlds population will lead to a footprint 2.4 times greater than the earths capacity to support us. And, if we move to levels of consumption similar to developed nations (Japan and USA) we will need 6 planets to support us!!

Another interesting fact is that China is exerting environmental damage valued at  8 -13 %  of GDP. This cost is never accounted for.  It includes the loss of important plants and animals that provide vital services such as traditional medicine (two thirds of Chinese people depend on traditional medicine).

Dr. Raven predicts that the consequences of this rate of population growth, emergence of a large middle class and continued non sustainable exploitation in China will lead to the loss of 77,000 square kilometers of marginal land this year alone. Within a few years the Tibetan ice cap will be lost with disastrous effects on the Tibetan plateau and downstream. 20 – 40% of all species will be in danger of extinction. It is estimated that current global rates of extinction are in the range of thousands of species every year. Very soon we will be losing tens of thousands of species each year, and two thirds of all species will be lost by the year 2100 as a result of humans.

So, should we really be so proud of our human inventions and constructions like the Great Wall below when the truth is that we are simply weapons of mass destruction!

I would love to know how the construction of one of China’s great sources of pride, the Great Wall affected wildlife migrations here.

In all the presentations here I am not alone in eagerly expecting to hear about how we can save wild places, wild species, our ecosystems, ecosystem services and landscapes. Dr Ravens noted that the planet needs to change levels of consumption, promote equal opportunities, and apply new technologies and implement major changes of thinking and technology. He said we need to expand our protected areas and gather more information…I felt like he was fumbling around looking for an answer.  After such a shocking lecture I found his recommendations far too fluffy – and I feel let down because I didn’t go away feeling like we have a solution.

I’m especially disturbed because of three interacting factors.

1. Conservation needs in Africa and other parts of the developing world are already underfunded and are not on the radar of our politicians or policy makers even though these issues are central to food security and therefore political stability
2. Climate change which is not our fault is making it doubly or trebly hard to save species or produce food – thereby aggravating an already bad situation
3. The global economic crisis has dried up funding for conservation in Africa.  Again, this crisis has nothing to do with Africa yet it’s punishing us in a deadly way. Funds for conservation are drying up and many highly qualified colleagues are leaving this field because they can’t feed their families. It makes me want to cry! Funnily enough there seems to be funds available for science especially developed country scientists, but tragically this is not translating into conservation actions or support for African scientists. There are only 35 African participants at this meeting of 1,000 participants – it was just too expensive for many to come to.

My feeling is that we urgently need to wake the world up to what’s happening in Africa so that we don’t face a crisis. Please help us by telling your friends and colleagues about the amazing work being done by our partners in al the projects on WildlifeDirect.org.

Don’t let the climate change and economic crisis drive good conservationists to extinction. Here are three simple things that you can do to help wildlife. Share our stories with your families and friends, connect with and help our bloggers, and make a donation to our projects.

In the next few days I’ll post more about the interesting papers being presented here in Beijing.  Before I go though I want to support what many of the presenters have argued - that we need to do more individually – after all, a huge proportion of the worlds carbon emissions and green house gases are the result of by our individual consumption habits.

Before I go though, do you know how big your carbon footprint is? You can calculate it with this neat online tool called my carbon footprint and then make decisions on what to do to reduce it. Mine was 15.1 which means that if everyone was as good as me we would only need .41 earths. I guess that’s fairly good though I know I could recycle more and be more careful in how we eat.

What are your results? Let us know what you get and tell us what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Good luck!

Tags: carbon footprint, Kenya, Peter Raven, SCB, Society for Conservation Biology, Species extinctions, wildlife

One response so far

Category: China, Ivory, Zimbabwe, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Nov 10 2008 | By: Maina

Our fears that the one-off ivory auction by four southern Africa states to China and Japan was not going to end well may come true. Not that that is any cause for us to wear a smirk and say “we told you so”, but a time for us to ask CITES to open their eyes.

There are reports in a Zimbabwean newspaper saying that Robert Mugabe’s government - cash strapped and hungry for foreign exchange to pay for imports - is planning to have the Chinese government pay for the ivory with guns Mugabe’s people ordered just before this year’s Zimbabwean presidential run-off. Apparently, Mugabe was facing an imminent end to his three-decade grip on power and decided to buy guns to wage war against the opposition should he loose the elections. The best place to buy these guns was from China since they are not participating in the arms embargo by western nations on Zimbabwe.

The report, published in the Zim Daily, indicate that part of the $480,000 Zimbabwe raised when they auctioned 3.5 tons of ivory last week is earmarked as payment for a cache of military hardware set to be flown into the capital Harare soon. The reports also indicate that in the run up to the ivory auction, “substantial quantities of high caliber weapons” had disappeared from the armory of Zimbabwe’s department of parks and wildlife near State House, Harare. During the same period, 200 elephants are reported to have been killed in the Zambezi Valley bordering Zambia. The Zimbabwe government blames this carnage on foreign animal rights groups which “want to thwart Mugabe’s bid to have CITES relax its trade rules”.

These reports have put the “fear of Mugabe” in conservationists who are now worried that Zimbabwe’s claim of being protector of the elephant is just a sham. Official Zimbabwe reports indicate that the country has 70,000 elephants in the wild, but experts think this is just window dressing by the government to get CITES to approve their proposal to sell all their alleged 20 tons of ivory stockpiles. The head of the wildlife department, Brigadier Albert Kanunga, a retired army officer, had lobbied CITES to allow them to sell 10 tons of ivory but only 3.5 tons were approved.

It is alleged that the ivory auctioned by Zimbabwe was flown out of Harare Airport on Thursday 6 November. If, then, the ivory for guns scam is true, the Chinese will bring Mugabe the guns sooner than latter. Apparently, an earlier shipping of Chinese military equipment bound for Harare had been turned away in the South African port of Durban. That could be the reason why China will fly in the new cache of arms.

Eight years ago in July 2000, a Nairobi based German wildlife conservation organization, ECOTERRA had revealed that Mugabe had sold 8 tons of ivory to China in exchange for firearms. According to the report on BNet website, the ivory had been flown out of Zimbabwe through Libya.

With such a record, it would be feasible to believe that last weeks CITES-backed auction will indeed be used to pay for more guns and ammo some of which - given the mysterious disappearance of arms from the wildlife department’s armory and consequent upsurge of elephant poaching- could be used in “harvesting” more ivory for Mugabe’s government. Which then negates the CITES claim that one-off sales will help elephant protection by reducing the attractiveness of poaching and investing the funds into conservation.

Moreover, Zambian and Senegalese middlemen operating in Zimbabwe organize underground deals through the “close-knit Chinese community” in South Africa to service the high demand for illegal ivory in China. This would imply that even South Africa, the allegorical “Big Brother” of Africa, is not fully in control of the ivory situation. In as much as Big Brother may have a tab of it’s own ivory stockpiles, they cannot rule out being used as a conduit for illegal ivory from tattered Zimbabwe. In short, the entire African continent is not ready for these - in Dr Richard Leakey’s words - ill advised one-off auctions.

In the end, what will save the elephant, in my view, is not how cheap ivory becomes - a la CITES - but how well we convince ordinary Chinese, Japanese and other Asian communities that they can practice their cultural beliefs without Ivory. Remove the demand for ivory and let the elephant roam the sunny grasslands of Africa without fear - like they did for millennia gone by. Legally selling government-held stockpiles will not kill demand.

Tags: China, CITES, elephant, guns, Ivory, ivory auctions, Japan, Mugabe, poaching, richard leakey, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

One response so far

Category: China, Ivory, Trade, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 28 2008 | By: Maina

Today, 28 October 2008, Namibia opened bidding for the 9 tonnes of ivory stockpiles it wants to auction in the controversial CITES backed one-off sale. The media has been shut out of this auction. According to a report appearing in the Namibian, a national paper, The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) never made an official announcement about the international auction. Most people would wonder if the government is ashamed or it’s trying to hide something.

Tonnes of applications and requests by international and national media houses piled into the Ministry’s in boxes but nobody was going to bother. When asked on Monday, the Deputy Environment and Tourism Minister Leon Jooste told media representatives that “It is too late to change the Ministry’s strategy with regard to the ivory auction.”

Local and regional conservation NGOs will also not be let into the auction. A request by the southern Africa office of the International Association for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to be allowed observer status was curtly rejected some two weeks ago. “The [MET] official just flatly denied us the possibility,” Christina Pretorius, Programme Manager of IFAW Southern Africa, is quoted as having told The Namibian on Monday.

Botswana will sell it’s 44 tonnes on Friday 30 October while South Africa, with the largest sale of 51 tonnes, and ZIMBABWE, 4 tonnes, will follow suit on 2 and 5 November respectively. In total, a whooping 108 tonnes of ivory will enter the market. The effect of this massive influx of ivory in the Chinese and Japanese markets, according to most conservationists, will be a corresponding increase in poaching to affect the rest of Africa. Traffic, the trade monitoring body under CITES however maintains that there is no evidence to support these allegations. Whatever happened to taking precautions?

The southern Africa states participating in this one off sale of ivory stockpiles first approved - in principle - by CITES in 2002, made $ 5-million in the last one off sale some 9 years ago in 1999. This year, according to the BBC, they expect to make $ 30-million - quite an increase occasioned just by the entry of China into the fray. They say this money will go towards elephant conservation. Traffic says that the ivory will not leave China and Japan into other markets. The two governments have promised to ensure that that does not happen but that is another story. There is evidence - overwhelming evidence - that illegal ivory trade is still alive and far outsells the legal trade.

The wisdom of this sale is quite questionable. If elephants are still endangered in most African states, then there is no logic really to let the sale of ivory - with the potential of fanning poaching - to anyone. Inasmuch as the data that Traffic presented does not show any increase in illegal trade, the fact remains that illegal trade will not go away just because the stockpiles have been sold and $30-million is injected into conservation (and this - if the money does indeed end up in conservation - will be in states where elephant populations are already growing).

Moreover, reports from Zimbabwe indicate that a large percentage of the wildlife has been eaten by desperate country folk or hunted illegally by unscrupulous safari hunting companies as the country’s governance sunk into an abyss. How can anyone justify allowing Zimbabwe to sell ivory? Besides, who knows when South Africa, Namibia and Botswana would end up with a dysfunctional government resulting in massive poaching and - perhaps - eventual extinction of elephants?

The insertion that selling these stockpiles will help conservation is myopic. This sale will only keep demand for ivory alive. And when the southern states have no more ivory to sell, who will feed China’s growing hunger for ivory? Is it not the rest of Africa where elephants are not properly protected? Is it not poaching?

One Kevin C from Taipei commenting on the BBC article puts things rather candidly:

Sounds like It is also a very good idea to sell drug stockpiles in police office. It will reduce the market value and make it less profitable to smuggle and produce it underground.

You are always welcome to have your say. This is a matter that needs all your input. Tell us what you think.

Tags: auction, China, CITES, hunting, Ivory, ivory stockpiles, Japan, Namibia, poaching, southern Africa, wildlife trade, Zimbabwe

9 responses so far

Category: China, Ivory, Trade, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Jul 30 2008 | By: Maina

In an earlier post, I reported that the US is second only to China in the size of the ivory blackmarket. Well, although most American buyers were said to be unaware of the legality of their ivory purchases, it turns out that there are glaring legal loopholes that traders are exploiting to fan the blackmarket.

Acclaimed wildlife trade investigators, Dr Esmond Bradley Martin and Daniel Stiles, spent several months in the US visiting 16 of America’s main towns and cities where ivory is sold between 2006 and 2007. Their report, Ivory Markets in the USA, has just been published. The report shows that even though the US is far ahead in its control of illegal ivory trade compared to Africa and Asia (US only comparable to Europe), its large population and vast buying power renders stringent control of ivory trade critical.

And there are controls. The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and various other legislation conform with CITES stipulations but there is leeway that can be exploited. Antique worked ivory (at least 100 years old), for example, can legally be imported and sold (according to both CITES and US laws). This leaves the market wide open for fake antiques (fabricated using smoke, dyes and exposure to heat and acidity). Trophy tusks can also be imported legally from the southern African countries that allow hunting but the raw ivory cannot be used commercially. This opens shady alleys where ivory from anywhere can easily find its way into the market with fake documents of origin. The same law allows sale of trophy tusks imported before July 1975, when CITES came into force, which again makes it that much easier to sell all and any purported trophy.

Twenty-two states have integrated federal wildlife laws into state laws and there is generally good cooperation between state and federal agencies. When wildlife specimens originate outside the US, however, law enforcement agencies find it hard to deal with and ivory is no exception. “Once ivory enters the US, it can move free of inspection within the 50 states. Neither state nor federal agencies regularly inspect shops or antiques fairs for wildlife products.” say Martin and Stiles in an article published in Swara magazine.

In a country where 24,000 worked ivory items on sale in 657 outlets were recorded by this particular investigation, it is no wonder that the market should be second only to China’s statistics. Of the 16 cities investigated, New York had by far the most ivory for sale: a minimum of 11,376 ivory items in 124 outlets, which is almost 5 times higher than the second highest, San Fransisco Bay Area with 2,777 items in 49 outlets. Greater LA records a close 2,605 items although in more outlets (170) closing the top three. Ivory workers are however difficult to find since they mostly work from home and are widely scattered throughout the 50 state colossus.

Interestingly, most of the recent imports of ivory into the US came from China! Since the US has never conducted any census on ivory and maintains no stockpile, it is difficult to know how much ivory is out there.

Granted, the US authorities hold the record for the highest number of ivory seizures in the world. But they also seize large quantities of illegal drugs but that does not mean that they are winning the war on drugs. Illegal ivory, like these drugs, still gets in.

The problem is that although CITES resolutions have called for various actions to control ivory trade, the US has implemented none of them. Particularly, according to the article by Martin and Stiles in Swara magazine, the US should pay attention to these actions:
1) Prohibit the unregulated domestic sale of ivory. the owner of the ivory should prove lawful possession
2) Register or license all importers, wholesalers, and retailers dealing in ivory items
3) Establish nationwide procedure, especially in retail outlets, informing tourists and other non-nationals not to purchase ivory in cases where it is illegal for them to import it into their own home countries
4) Introduce recording and inspection procedures to enable government agencies to monitor the flow of ivory within the country

Tags: CITES, elephants, Ivory, US, wildlife trade

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Category: China, wildlife trade | Date: Jul 22 2008 | By: Maina

This may not be news to you but I find it rather disturbing that the US has stayed up there in the list of leading centers for illegal wildlife trade despite the growth in the number of conservation conscious individuals.

An AFP report I stumbled upon in the ABC site (dated 10 June) quotes the US Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Claudia McMurray, saying that China is the largest market for illegal wildlife products, but, disturbingly, the US comes second in the $10-Billion a year trade. So, first, we can confirm what we’ve always known: China is bad for wildlife. Second, it is time for you to carefully consider what you, as an individual, can do to help your country get a good name, and most important, save wildlife.

Perhaps this should help. The US market is not driven by deliberate and insensitive demand for wildlife products but by lack of information about which products are illegal. Most ”culprits” of the trade in US buy their products while traveling, online, or in shops in the US. Most of the time, they think the products are perfectly legal, which is not the case.

So why is the US staying up there with the bad boys? Yes, you guessed right. Traditional CHINESE medicine is gaining popularity in the US and nowadays it is not just being practiced by people of Asian origin. All sorts of people are administering and consuming this service. Americans are also into live exotic pets, which disturbs the equation further. But again, they believe it is legal.

US Special Envoy for wildlife trafficking issues, actress Bo Derek, is quoted saying, “It was very embarrassing for me to find out that the US is number two in consuming endangered wildlife,”

So what is your role as a caring and conscious American? Don’t leave the entire awareness creation process to your government - for they have launched a campaign to educate people on these issues. Go ahead and tell your neighbor that having a pet Iguana might actually be illegal. Tell them about the scale of illegal wildlife trade worldwide and help them form the graphic image of wildlife slaughter in Africa, Asia and South America to supply the market. Tell them about the wars fueled by the competition for the exctraction of these resources, and the women and children that suffer the consequences. That should convince them.

But who will educate China? Am sure there are many Chinese people who have resolved to change their countrymen’s perception about wildlife, and they are really working at it. Let us encourage them. Help them in any way you can. We cannot give up on China. Giving up on China, is giving up on wildlife.

Now, go do your country - and wildlife - some good.

Tags: China, US, wildlife, wildlife trade

15 responses so far

Category: China, Ivory, elephants | Date: Jul 17 2008 | By: Maina

An AFP article reproduced in Yahoo! news reports that South African animal rights people are enraged by the decision to allow China to buy Ivory from Africa.

In a strong statement, the rights group said that the South African government “is already licking its lips at the prospect of this dishonorable and blood-soaked deal. We are also horrified that Britain and the EU supported this sale.” The group has accused their government of being “one of the main proponents for the continuation of the immoral ivory trade.”

This, my friends, is a good sign. If there are people in those countries that are seen to benefit from the ivory sale who are already up in arms against it, then those of us - in East, Central and Western Africa - who know that this deal, and the ensuing upsurge of poaching, will hurt us more, should also join in the foray. We should roll our sleeves, clench our fists and get ready to bruise someone. We should make so much noise as to make China’s trade in African ivory impossible.

We now know that CITES is not a pro-animal group but a pro-trade organization that has totally failed to protect our wildlife. The time has come for CITES to step aside. Anyone who endorses China on anything that concerns animals does not deserve life on this earth. For crying out loud, they have dog meat in their menus!

Part of the deal (which sailed through on a 9-3 vote) is for China to support anti-poaching and conservation activities in Africa. Can we honestly expect China to do this given its animal rights record? Who’s fooling who?

Anyway, Here is the link to the AFP story if you need to go read further about the sentiments of the South African rights people.

9 responses so far

Category: China, Ivory, elephants | Date: Jul 16 2008 | By: baraza

Within hours of China being approved as the legal traders for the southern African ivory, here’s the AP story about 3 Chinese nationals are caught smuggling ivory in Kenya!

NAIROBI (AFP) — Kenyan authorities on Wednesday detained three Chinese nationals at the country’s main airport on suspicion of smuggling ivory, an official said.

“The three Chinese nationals — two women and a man — were arrested at the airport in Nairobi while in possession of 2.2 kilogrammes (4.8 pounds) of ivory,” Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) spokesman Gichuki Kabukuru told AFP.

Oddly,  different press were told different things..AP say

The trio, who had stayed in Kenya for four days, were en route to the Zimbabwean capital Harare, he added.

While IOL say” The women were stopped at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Wednesday morning, said Kentice Tikomo, a spokesperson for the Kenyan Wildlife Service. They were booked on a flight to China, she said”.

Tags: China, CITES, ivory trade, Kenya

8 responses so far

Category: China, Ivory, elephants | Date: Jul 16 2008 | By: baraza

I’m still in Chattanooga in bed nursing a terrible cold. To make things worse, despite all our efforts the Standing Committee did the illogical thing and China will buy the ivory from southern Africa. Poor elephants.

I predict that the southern African countries will not get the prices they anticipate - last time this happened Japan bough the ivory in an auction that took place in Zimbabwe. The hope was to have bidding to drive up prices, but the bidders had another plan, they fixed prices through agreements and gave Africa very little. They hope that China will be ‘fairer’, it’s is a long shot.

I’m surprised at the statements I’m reading and hearing.

Sky News says

“The decision to approve China as an ivory buyer goes against recommendations from the African Elephant Coalition (AEC) meeting held in June in Mombasa, Kenya.”

While the Environment News Service says

The [ETIS] report finds that the five countries most heavily implicated in the illicit trade in ivory are Cameroon, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Thailand. “All of these countries featured in previous ETIS analyses as countries of concern, but only China demonstrates significant progress in addressing illicit ivory trade issues,” the report states.

And the BBC says

“China has acted rather successfully against its own illegal domestic ivory market,” said Tom Milliken, a director for Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

“Now China should help other countries to do the same, especially in central Africa where elephant poaching is rampant.”

But Robbie Marsland, UK director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), condemned the decision, saying it could prove disastrous for the world’s elephant populations.

I think Richard Leakey will make a comment on this, will keep you all updated.

Tags: Africa, China, conservation, elephants, illegal trade, Ivory, wildlifedirect

7 responses so far

Category: China, Ivory, elephants | Date: Jul 14 2008 | By: baraza

The Canadians received my letter and promised to ‘consider it’. That’s a start. I hope all your letters have gone out - I think it really makes people think when they get letters.

Here are some of the latest news stories which it seems all predict the worst

The Guardian says “A controversial decision to allow China to buy stockpiles of African elephant ivory looks set to go ahead this week after monitors from the group Traffic said the country had cracked down on its illegal domestic trade.

” China also has the recommendation of the Cites Secretariat which says that anti-smuggling initiatives by China, the largest blackmarket for illegal ivory, have been effective. Cites’s standing committee, meeting in Geneva, will decide if China’s controls on the illegal trade are stringent enough to prevent illegal ivory being laundered with stock from the sale or it being re-exported.

“In 2002, China was the principal driver of the illegal trade and made very few seizures,” said Tom Milliken, director of eastern and southern African operations for Traffic, which monitors the trade and advises Cites.

“Now it has been making seizures left, right and centre. They’ve added 100 seizures this year alone. On the domestic front China has moved aggressively.”

‘Big problem’

The increase in seizures in the past six years has been dramatic. According to the Elephant Trade Information System (Etis), the world’s largest database of elephant ivory seizures compiled by Traffic, China is now involved in around 63% of seizures. In 2002 the figure was 6%. Milliken said the contrast with some central African countries is stark: Nigeria has made 12 seizures in 20 years.

Milliken said that China was also cracking down on retailers and had developed systems of certification. “When we go back to stores we flagged up as having illegal ivory they aren’t selling it anymore or have been closed down. Product identification cards come with items legally sold and for items over a certain amount you get a photo ID.”

Dr Meng Xianlin, head of the Chinese delegation to the Cites meeting in Geneva, said China needed legal ivory to maintain ancient carving traditions. He accepted that Chinese demand for ivory presents a “big problem” for elephant conservation, but argues that “the stockpiles are a positive way to solve this problem.”

Nice argument !

He added: “There is high pressure to control the illegal trade and we have the mechanism to prohibit illegal ivory going into the legal channel.” However, he conceded “we cannot guarantee 100%” effectiveness.

Really persuasive

While those supporting approval of the sale believe that linking legal ivory supplies with China’s huge demand will reduce poaching and illegal trade, wildlife conservation groups say it still stimulates demand and will have the opposite effect.

“Milliken said the chances of a sale are high: “There’s real motivation for this sale. Last July a nine-year rest period after the sale was agreed by Cites so the southern African countries are keen to get this done. I think a sale will go ahead within months of this decision.”

:(:(:(:(

Meanwhile Michale McCarthey reporting in The Independent says what I’d like to say
If China’s application is approved, the resulting huge increase in the legal ivory trade will give the biggest possible shot in the arm to the enormous illicit trade which is supplied by poachers killing elephants across Africa – 23,000 a year at the most recent estimate.

With its own problems of poverty and disease, Africa has no money to enforce wildlife conservation, and the only way to stop mass-scale elephant poaching is by choking off demand for ivory. Many experienced conservationists – not to mention the 148 British MPs who have signed an early day motion in the Commons – feel that if China gets the go-ahead tomorrow, the African elephant will be getting a death sentence.

Chinese consumer demand for shark fins for soup is already driving down shark populations across the world. The demand from traditional Chinese medicine for tiger bones and other body parts is a principal reason for the collapse of tiger numbers in India, even in what are supposed to be protected areas. A report from Greenpeace in 2005 alleged that Chinese demand for tropical timber was already the biggest driver of rainforest destruction in Asia. And now this rapacious, remorseless and unending demand for natural resources is about to be unleashed on elephants.

The moment is all the more critical because it has come out of the blue – the world has not yet woken up to what is happening, and until the situation was disclosed on The Independent’s front page on Saturday, it had received virtually no publicity. The British Government appears to have been preparing to go along with China’s application to be an ivory buyer, hoping that, since it was happening in an obscure committee meeting in Geneva, no one would notice.

Even the Herald Tribune have a piece on China and ivory here Amazingly all these articles make it sound like Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC supports the sale of ivory to China but that’s not what I hear from his friends. So, why are the IUCN agencies saying one thing to the press and another to their colleagues? It feels like something very sinister is going on.

Daniel Cressey did a post about the China ivory debate in The Great Beyond which pointed me to this AP report that seriously raises doubts about China’s ability to control the illegl ivory trade.

It’s a great article - part of it is here

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China’s government lost track of 121 tons of elephant ivory over a dozen years that probably was sold on illegal markets, according to a previously undisclosed Chinese report to U.N. regulatory officials.

The “shortfall” in ivory described in the document between 1991 and 2002 — equal to the tusks from about 11,000 dead elephants — could provide fodder for representatives of a U.N. accord to reject China’s attempt next week to gain permission to import more ivory.

“We have not been able to account for the shortfall through the sale of legal ivory by the selected selling sites in the country,” Chinese officials reported in 2003 to the Swiss-based U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES. “This suggests a large amount of illegal sale of the ivory stockpile has taken place.”

The Associated Press obtained the Chinese report from the Environmental Investigation Agency, a watchdog group based in Washington and London. EIA also has compiled a briefing for nations that signed on to CITES to try to prevent China from gaining permission to trade ivory at a CITES meeting in Geneva, Switzerland next week.

Tags: Africa, China, CITES, elephants, ivory trade, wildlifedirect

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