Baraza

Category: Africa, Ivory, Kenya, Trade, elephants, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Oct 05 2009 | By: Maina

We could be headed back to the ‘dark ages’ of African elephant poaching going by the recent spate of ivory seizures in the continent. Wildlife enthusiasts will remember the horrible days back in the 1980s when the Kenyan elephant population was brought down to its knees by the large scale poaching that was also affecting most of the range states for the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana). Those days may well be back.

A few days ago, the Kenya Wildlife Service seized a large cache of illegal ivory at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Capital FM of Nairobi report in their website that “Police and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) personnel on Wednesday seized 61 tusks of raw ivory weighing 532 Kilograms (1,172 pounds) at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).”The large haul is believed to have been headed to Bangkok, Thailand, through Addis Abab, Ethiopia. KWS Director Julius Kipng’etich reports that:

“The unaccompanied luggage was to be air-freighted to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the way to Bangkok, Thailand,” he said adding that the ivory had been falsely declared as “POLISHING BENCH” in the Airway Bill and was packed in four boxes.

As luck would have it, the KWS also received reports from Ethiopian Airlines that another larger consignment - 637 kg (1,404 pounds) - of similarly disguised ivory had been intercepted in the capital Addis Ababa two days earlier. “This consignment had also originated from JKIA destined to Bangkok via Addis Ababa by the same consignee,” said Kipng’etich.

The total of 1,169 kg (2,577 pounds) of ivory seized is suspected to be from Kenyan elephants, which would then prove that there is indeed a rise in elephant poaching. According to KWS data, this year, 145 elephants have been killed illegally. This compared to the 47 reported illegally killed elephants in the last two years, is indeed a cause for panic. The rise in number of illegally killed elephants is alarming!

The story of the tough times for elephants doesn’t end at the horn of Africa. On October 1, the same day that the KWS seized ivory in Nairobi, five suspects are reported to have been arraigned in a Harare, Zimbabwe court charged with possession of 30,8 kilograms of ivory worth more than $4 500 (American dollars, not Zimbabwean).

These outlaws had, withing their residence, a high caliber rifle used to kill elephants - .303! The Harare court remanded them out of custody, so they’ll be staying in their residence, probably shoot a few more elephants with another .303 rifle then go back to court on the appointed date for the hearing of the current case.

In Central Africa Republic, the French news agency, AFP, reports that “Police detained two major ivory traffickers in the Central African Republic as a part of a joint operation with animal rights activists”. So the cancer is spreading. According to the AFP, this is the first arrest of this kind in this central African state since they instituted a law against wildlife trade in some 30 years ago. This lot of thugs are said to have their own large stash of illegal ivory.

One of the suspects had 157 ivory objects weighing more than 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds). Unfortunately, these crooks will only get 1-year jail terms each should they be found guilty, which is a ridiculously soft punishment for someone who is probably responsible for the death of tens of elephants, if not hundreds.

Experts say some 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks. Most believe that the upsurge in poaching in recent months is due to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) decision to allow the southern African states of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe(!) to sell their ivory stockpile to the highest bidder in China and Japan. It is believed this prompted a spike in the illegal market for ivory, which, needless to say, is responsible for the upsurge in poaching.

I personally blame CITES for the mess that is ivory poaching. It is difficult and expensive to trace the origin of ivory, especially after it has been worked. What logic did they use to agree to the one-off auction of ivory?

Unless the illegal trade in ivory is completely stumped out, nobody should sell an ounce (or a milligram) of this item. In my opinion, there should not be any ivory trade at all, whether it is properly controlled or not.

Besides, what do humans need ivory for? If humans truly needed ivory, then God (or evolution) would have equipped them with a fine long pair each.

Tags: Africa, China, CITES, elephant, Ivory, KWS, poaching, wildlife

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 02 2009 | By: paula

Hello friends. This is another post from China which is a reflection of the cultural differences that really shocked and disturbed me. I had expected to be exposed to new things but I had no idea it would be this bizarre.

We first came across a caged cricket in our hostel. I tried to release by asking kindly to the staff - who gave me incredulous looks as if what I was proposing was sacrilege. Cruelty to a cricket does not resonate. The poor screaming creature gave me nightmares.

The friendly hostel staff told me that crickets are important in Chinese superstition, - they are thought to reflect intelligence and to bring good fortune.  In fact, if a person were to harm a cricket, it would bring great misfortune.

So how does holding a cricket in a tiny cage not equate to harm?

We found hundreds of caged crickets in the markets. These miniature cages are hand made from various materials wood and reeds.  The cages are tiny, measuring only about 3×4 inches.  The crickets sing or is it cry, all day and all night.

Cricket keeping in China dates back 2000 years. During the Tang Dynasty from 500 BC to 618 AD, crickets were captured and kept in cages so their songs could be heard all the time.  In the Song Dynasty from 960 to 1278 AD, “cricket fighting” began as an important sport. It was so popular that hundreds of people committed suicide because of a losing or injured cricket.

Crickets are also used to tell the time to start preparing the fields for the spring harvest.  This indicator of climate change is called Jing-Zhe, or “Walking of the Insects”.

It’s hard to believe that the cricket is so revered in China yet they are eaten and are kept in tiny cages. It’s like a noise cricket prison camp.

I doubt that cricket welfare is on the radar in China, there are much more serious animal welfare concerns that many have noted. In a future post I’ll tell you about food street in Wangfujing, also in Beijing where you can buy all manner of wildlife including endangered species like Tibetan antelope, silk worm chrysalis, cicadas, water beetles, centipedes, seahorses, star fish, sea urchins, scorpions, bee larvae and strange body parts of sheep.

Tags: China, Crickets, cruelty, Insects, wildlifedirect

4 responses so far

Category: Africa, Ivory, elephants | Date: Jul 31 2009 | By: paula

“Africa and Asian elephants are in for tough times ahead” says Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants. After the ivory sales last year, elephant poaching has increased. Many conservationists believe it is being fueled by the demand in Eastern countries – yet nobody dares to say this. The money raised from the sales of ivory was supposed to go into elephant conservation. Some people who dare to call themselves conservationists argued that the ban on ivory was wrong, the burn was wasteful, and that the sale of ivory was the best way to generate funds and support for elephant conservation.  Well, how come elephants are worse off today than they were before the sales?

And, how come ivory is now selling at US$ 1,888/kg in Vietnam? Isn’t it obvious that the one off sale has stimulated demand and prices are rising? Now even the IUCN is saying that elephantas are in trouble …but they are confining their concerns to Asian elephants …why??

It’s now apparent that the four southern African countries that sold their ivory to China and Japan were duped – their stock piles fetched prices in the range of 100 – 120$/kg! The real value of ivory in eastern markets is at least ten times this. Southern African countries were cheated by the East - but I’m not feeling sorry for them!

Even more worrying however that the CITES conference that approved the one off sale did so on condition of a 9 year moratorium. Kenya led that campaign and the conference adopted it. But they made a MASSIVE BLUNDER. The wording of the agreement only binds the countries that sold their stocks. It does not include countries like Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia that have massive (and some illegally acquired) stockpiles . With renewed demand in Asia, these countries are likely to demand for sales of their stockpiles too at the next CITES conference.

Iain Douglas–Hamilton and I discussed this problem with his researchers at his house last night. He showed me the maps of elephant killings in Kenya in 2008 – the image is frightening. the country is covered in dots- each one representing a dead elephant. He says it isn’t as bad as it was in the 1960,s but I reminded him that back then we had ten times as many elephants. Based on genetic evidence from tusks, Sam Wasser believes that the proportion of elephants we are losing today is far greater than any time in history.

I met Iain about 30 year ago when as a young volunteer recruited to measure Kenya’s ivory stockpile. It as a morbid job but we had to know what was happening. We weighed and measured every single tusk and estimated the age of the elephant that had died. We processed 30 tons of ivory in 2 days. The information showed us that poachers were going for younger and younger animals. At that point, I had never seen an elephant in the wild, but I was so disgusted with the killings and disillusioned about the future of elephants that I turned down a project on ele’s and went on to study primates. Later I did study elephants for my PhD, when the ivory ban was working and guns had fallen silent.

These are the 30 tons of ivory that I measured in 1989. Kenya’s president burned the lot and the world praised him for it.

Sadly, those guns are back in action and Africa’s elephants are once again at risk because we were persuaded by greedy people to run a risky experiment.

It feels like the precautionary principle has gone extinct.  If we aren’t careful, we will soon be seeing the nightmarish scenes of hacked off faces of elephants that dominated the conservation news in the 1980’s.

Iain asked me ‘what are we going to do about it?” and I looked at him blankly, I didn’t have an answer.

What would you have replied - what can we do?

Tags: China, elephant poaching, elephants, Ivory, Kenya, Samburu, stockpiles, Tsavo

5 responses so far

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: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 12 2009 | By: paula

Ni Hau everyone, that’s hello from Beijing

I’m at the
Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting which is being held in a conference center just north of Beijing, China. I have been in China for over 3 weeks now and still feel ‘lost’. Communication across the language barrier is really tough, though sometimes funny.

But the good news is that China did not meet my worst expectations, Beijing is not crowded,  but twitter and facebook are both blocked from here, and the air pollution makes the sun look like an orangy blob in the sky. The willdife sold as street food is material for an entire blog post! On the whole, the people here have been absolutely lovely.

I been attending business and scientific meetings since yesterday and I get the feeling that scientists are either 1. Oblivious to the fact that we are losing so much wildlife, or 2. Don’t care anymore, but will keep gathering data anyway.

It’s frightening how serious the conservation situation is world wide. I’ll be bringing you reports from the various prestenations. We desperately need a global groundwell, a movement of ordinary individuals to turn the situation around. It’s going to take a new kind of leadership. I wish I had a crystal ball.

Tags: China, endangered species, SCB, Society for Conservation Biology, wildlife

2 responses so far

Category: Ivory, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Mar 17 2009 | By: baraza

Hello readers, it’s Paula here at 5.30 am and I can’t sleep - alarm bells are ringing in my head about ivory trade and elephant killings.

Here’s the time line

Mid 2007 online ivory sales reported to be booming

June 2007 CITES meeting…Kenya porposes a 20 year moratorium on ivory sales, supported by 21 “like-minded parties” including Mali, Ghana, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Togo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Liberia, Comoros, Congo Brazzaville and Cote d’Ivoire. Ivory sales  get go ahead at CITES with blessing of major conservation organizations

“This African solution to an African problem marks a great step forward for wildlife conservation,” said CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers. “It is good news for the elephant, good news for the people who live alongside them and good news for regional cooperation in Africa.”

“We are looking for real conservation achievement on the ground,” said Tom Milliken, of TRAFFIC, director of TRAFFIC South and East Africa. “Let countries now take this spirit of goodwill and tackle the ivory that is being hemorrhaged illegally from West and Central Africa.”

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, IFAW, says that at least 20,000 elephants are killed annually for their ivory and the lives of about 100 rangers are lost each year protecting them.  They warn that the auctions would stimulate Asian markets demand smuggling and poaching.

Nobody listens.

The Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) analysis reveals that key problem countries for illegal ivory are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Thailand and China.

Nobody takes any notice

October 2008 Namibia opens bidding in controversial ivory auction

Renowned conservationist Richard Leakey expresses concern  and calls it a disservice to conservation

November 2008 Ivory auctions take place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe 100 tons sold raising $15 million. Price? $150 per kg.  

November 2008 57 people arrested and one ton of illegal ivory seized in a sweep of 50 locations in Kenya, Congo Brazaville, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia.  

January 2009 Ebay bans ivory on online auctions

Three months after auctions, Kenya reports alarming increase in elephant poaching  98 killed in 2008 vs 48 the year before. Two poachers are arrested by KWS. Five elephants killed in February. British MP’s raises alarm over increase in poaching.  

Conservation groups blame demand in China for runaway elephant killings

February 2009  Despite fear of reprisals, Cynthia Moss of the Amboseli Elephant Trust reports a surge in elephant killings and decries the lack of government response.

February 2009 Jane Goodall adds her voice to the role of China in plundering Africa’s resources.

February 2009 Legal auctions were supposed to depress illegal prices right? Wrong! TRAFFIC and WWF report ivory prices in Vietnam are highest in the world at $1500 – $1,863/kg more than ten times the value of legal ivory sold in November 2008! The few remaining Asian elephants are now at grave risk.

March 2008 Vietnam seize over 7 tons of ivory from Tanzania and plans to auction it. Why is nobody questioning this?

China deny’s any link or responsibility for increasing poaching and ivory seizure and publish the Chinese official position piece in local newspapers

Report from Therese Hart in DR Congo reveals that elephants down by 80% in last 50 years.

Why can’t I sleep?

My problem with all this is that CITES is supposed to uphold the precautionary principle. Obviously warnings in 2008 were well placed but there seems to be nobody doing anything about the escalating illegal ivory sales, elephant killings and ivory laundering. Where is the voice of TRAFFIC, WWF, AWF, FFI…all the organizations that were born and or grew out of the elephant crisis in the 1980s? They all supported the ivory sales and none of them seem to be willing to admit it was a MASSIVE STUPID MISTAKE and that measures must be taken now to reverse the impact.

How many more elephants do we have to lose before we have the courage to admit that it was a mistake to renew ivory trade? It is obvious that the flood of legal trade has created a wonderful opportunity for illegal ivory to be laundered, and demand and prices are so high in Vietnam that officials are obviously being corrupted, and countries are taking the law in to their own hands (Vietnam is planning to auction ivory seized from Tanzania!)

CITES will claim that the 9 year moratorium on further auctions will prevent further growth in demand or release of ivory onto markets. The truth that nobody is talking about, is that the moratorium only applies to four countries…I predict that at the next CITES conference we will see ivory sale proposals from a number of African countries including Tanzania, DR Congo, Uganda and maybe even Kenya! These countries are not bound by the moratorium.  

Grrr…it makes me so mad. What do you think? How can we get a message out?

Tags: China, CITES, DR Congo, elephant, elephant killings, elephant populations, ETIS, ivory trade, Jane Goodall, richard leakey, wildlifedirect, WWF

No responses yet

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 10 2009 | By: baraza

The number of Yunnan snub nosed monkeys has risen from more than 500 in 1983 to around 1,300 at present at the nature reserve thanks to the protection efforts of local government and residents. There are only 2,000 Yunnan golden monkeys in China -  one of the most endangered animals on earth.

This good news is countered by the sad news that yet ANOTHER Chinese person has been arrested  at Nairobi’s international airport with ivory.

Tags: China, Ivory, snub nosed monkeys, Yunnan

No responses yet

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: Ivory, elephants | Date: Nov 01 2008 | By: baraza

Botswana auctions 44 tonnes of ivory

Agence France Presse

October 31, 2008

GABARONE (AFP) — Botswana auctioned 44 tonnes of ivory Friday to buyers from China to Japan at a luxurious resort, officials said, in a closed-door sale expected to rake in millions of dollars.

The auction is the second sale of elephant tusks this week approved by CITES, the international convention that governs trade in endangered species, after Namibia on Tuesday sold more than seven tonnes of ivory for 1.1 million dollars.

Botswana’s wildlife ministry conducted the invitation-only sale at the prestigious Phakalane Resort, but officials declined to give any details of the auction.

The ministry’s deputy permanent secretary Edmont Moabi said a statement would be issued later.

Based on the results of Namibia’s auction, Botswana was expected to earn several million dollars, which CITES requires the country to invest in elephant conservation programmes.

About 108 tonnes of tusks are going on the block around in four southern African countries, in a once-off sale to China and Japan approved by CITES in July.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) approved the auctions — the first in nearly a decade — to sell off tusks from government stocks only to buyers from China and Japan.

While elephant populations in many parts of Africa have been decimated by poaching, CITES says that herds in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are healthy.

The four countries are home to 312,000 elephants, and their stocks of tusks came from natural deaths or the culling of herds to keep the population under control.

Some conservationists have raised concerns that the sudden arrival of so much legal ivory on the market could make it easier for poachers to slip their ill-gotten wares past regulators.

Tags: auction, Botswana, China, CITES, ivory sales

No responses yet

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