Baraza

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

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 26 2008 | By: baraza

This is from the official CITES webstie Geneva, 24 October 2008 - it makes me feel ill

The Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), Mr Willem Wijnstekers, will visit Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe during the next two weeks to supervise closely the ivory sales that the member States of the Convention agreed to in June 2007, in The Hague.

On the margins of the four ivory auctions, Mr Wijnstekers will also hold talks with Chinese and Japanese authorities, as well as traders, about the details of further supervisory activities of the Secretariat upon arrival of the ivory in those countries and thereafter.

The proceeds of the sales must be used exclusively for elephant conservation and community development programmes within or adjacent to the elephant range. The revenues are expected to boost the countries’ capacity to conserve biodiversity, strengthen enforcement controls and contribute to the livelihoods of the rural people in southern Africa. All this without affecting negatively African and Asian elephant populations.

Background information

Under an agreement reached in The Hague in 2007, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe were authorized to make a single sale of a total of 108 tons of government-owned ivory. The following quantities of raw ivory registered by 31 January 2007 have been approved for sale: Botswana: 43,682.91 kg, Namibia: 9,209.68 kg, South Africa: 51,121.8 kg, and Zimbabwe: 3,755.55 kg.

Elephant populations of the four countries are in Appendix II of CITES, which means that, even though they are not necessarily now threatened with extinction, the trade in their products is strictly regulated. Recent studies concluded that over 312,000 elephants live in these four countries and that their number has increased in recent years.

The CITES Standing Committee, which oversees the implementation of CITES between the major conferences, gave the go-ahead to the one-off sale of ivory last July by approving China as the second importing country. Japan had been approved earlier.

Each sale is to consist of a single shipment per destination and may only go to China and Japan, whose internal controls on ivory sales comply with the required verification standards established by CITES for this one-off sale.

Between March and April 2008, the CITES Secretariat conducted missions to these four countries and verified that the declared ivory stocks had been properly registered by 31 January 2007; consisted solely of ivory of legal origin (excluding seized ivory and ivory of unknown origin); and had been marked according to CITES requirements. They also verified that their weights were in accordance with the relevant records. This involved the checking and comparison of computerized databases and thousands of paper records, as well as the physical inspection and examination of hundreds of randomly-selected tusks and ivory pieces. In each case, the findings of the audits were satisfactory.

The CITES Secretariat is monitoring the Chinese and Japanese domestic trade controls to ensure that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to sell ivory of illegal origin.

The 2007 African agreement stipulates that after these shipments have been completed, no new proposals for further sales from the four countries concerned are to be considered by CITES during a resting period of nine years that will commence as soon as the new sales have been completed.

Tags: China, CITES, elephant ivory, elephant poaching, ivory sales, Japan, South Africa, Zimbabwe

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Category: elephants | Date: Oct 21 2008 | By: baraza

I can’t shake the feeling that elephants are going to be the big news stories for coming weeks. First, we are all anxiously awaiting the 28th of this month when more than 100 tons of ivory will be auctioned in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The sale approved by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, in July shocked many of us because China was approved as a trading partner. China! A country that has been implicated in enormous levels of illegal trade and even for organizing poaching in Kenya.  I’m talking to a number of people and I am doing some research on this issue. I’ll bring you some more posts and news about  what this means for Africa and elephants in coming days.

Today however, I’m in celebration mood. Ivory sales on Ebay are to end. This blog post is to send out a MASSIVE THANK YOU TO RICHARD BREWER-HAY of Ebay who made the decision and the announcement on an inhouse blog here.

The announcement has led to a media frenzy about this including BBC, and on Market watch - they emphasize that the announcement came just moments before a damning report by IFAW that the popular auctioning site is a place that launders vast amounts of ivory. You can download the IFAW report “Killing with Keystrokes” here.

Quick search on Ebay for “elephant ivory”  gives 6 pages with 25 items for sale on each! You can also get other elephant products like hide.

Regardless of why Ebay made the announcement, I think it’s great that conservation pressure have had an impact on Ebay. I’m a bit saddened that the ban  is not immediate but comes into effect on January 1st 2009. So, for the time being anyoen can still buy ivory trinkets - a quick search on Ebay revealed a suprising number of items on sale!

Hopefully the ivory ban is just the beginning, for sure there are many other wildlife products especially in oriental medicines, that are made up of body parts from endangered species. These should all be banned as well without delay as IFAW write another report. I’ve left a note on the Ebay blog to this effect. You can too…if you get a chance, leave a thank you  to Richard on the Ebay blog here.

On a related topic, elephants in Kenya are being saved by cell phones on a private ranch through a partnership between a conservationist Iain Douglas Hamilton, a private ranch owner and the largest Cell phone company Safaricom. The elephant with the cell phone device on a radio-collar  basically sends text messages to rangers every time he gets too close for comfort to villages. The rangers swing into action and chase him away - saving his life as well as the crops and lives of people in the village. Its an extraordinary use of cell phone technology and everyone is talking about it- check out Wildele’s here and Afrigadget blog about innovations in Africa.

Well, for your benefit, I’m going to see Ian Douglas Hamilton from Save the Elephants tomorrow to get you the inside scoop so stay tuned to Baraza blog.

Tags: Ebay, Ian Douglas-Hamilton, IFAW, illegal wildlife trade, Ivory, ivory sales, Richard Brewer-Hays, Save the elephants, wildlifedirect

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