Baraza

Category: Africa, Ivory, Trade, elephants, wildlife trade | Date: Mar 26 2009 | By: admin

We reported on this seizure and the surprising lack of concern by Tanzania that Vietnam was about to auction seized ivory that was smuggled from Tanzania. Now Tanzania seems to have woken up …lets hope we find out what is really going on here

Saga of the elephant tusks smuggled from Tanzania to Vietnam: Govt finally takes action

ThisDay

March 25 2009

TANZANIA has set the ball rolling for a formal investigation into the

recently reported episode whereby just over six tonnes of elephant tusks

said to have been smuggled out of the country, have now been seized by

Vietnamese customs officials and set up for auction in that country.

According to the Director of Wildlife at the Ministry of Tourism and

Natural Resources, Erasmus Tarimo, official feelers have been extended

to determine whether an international poaching network may have been

behind the alleged smuggling of the jumbo tusks.

The international police network (Interpol), Convention on International

Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the anti-poaching Lusaka

Agreement Task Force (LATF) office in Nairobi, Kenya have all been

contacted and requested to help, Tarimo said.

This represents a U-turn from the government’s initial stated position

of ’complete unawareness’ about the whole situation, even as authorities

in Vietnam announced their own plans to put the tusks, valued at $29.41m

(approx.40bn/-), up for auction.

If the Vietnamese government should actually go ahead and implement such

a plan at this stage of the saga, Tanzania as a nation would surely

stand to lose billions of shillings.

Customs officials at Vietnam’s Hai Phong Port were earlier this month

reported to have discovered a total of 6,232 kilogrammes of elephant

tusks originating from Tanzania, hidden in hundreds of boxes of plastic

waste inside a container which had been transported from Tanzania

through Malaysia.

There were more than 200 pairs of tusks in the haul, the reports said.

Vietnamese officials are said to have received information about the

consignment when it was initially loaded aboard a ship in Dar es Salaam

in January this year, and had been waiting for the consignee to turn up

at the Hai Phong Port.

The consignee of the shipment was identified through the ship’s waybill

as a local (Vietnamese) company called Phuc Thien Ngan. Hai Phong police

have since been looking for the company’s director Vu Ngoc Tuan, but

reportedly to no avail.

Vietnamese officials described the shipment as ’’the biggest ivory haul

ever in Vietnam,’’ and the Hai Phong customs bureau gave a cash reward

equivalent to $572 to the inspectors who made the discovery.

Early investigations indicated that the container appeared to have been

loaded onto a ship in Dar es Salaam and transported to a port in

Malaysia, before arriving at Hai Phong aboard a Malaysian-flagged vessel.

Vietnamese authorities believe the tusks would have then been

transported to China, either by sea or road.

In a telephone interview with THISDAY yesterday, Tarimo said the

Tanzania chapter of Interpol had since contacted their colleagues in

Vietnam in the wake of the reports.

He said although the Vietnamese Interpol has yet to respond, some

information has started trickling in from CITES, whose representatives

in Vietnam are understood to have seen the container and reported its

markings to indicate that its original point of shipment was indeed the

port of Dar es Salaam.

Tarimo did not disclose the exact date of shipment from Dar es Salaam,

but said further details would be provided in the coming days.

LATF in Nairobi is described as a law enforcement institution which is

also secretariat of the Lusaka Agreement on Cooperative Enforcement

Operations Directed at Illegal Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora. The

parties to the agreement are Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Lesotho,

and the Republic of Congo, while Ethiopia, Eritrea, Swaziland and the

Republic of South Africa are also about to become signatories.

International agreements like the Lusaka Agreement and CITES aim at

protecting animal species from being poached illegally and traded

without following prescribed procedures.

Tarimo said any local officials found to have been involved in the

shipment of the jumbo tusks to Vietnam would bear the full brunt of the

nation’s laws, regardless of what happens to the foreign collaborators

’’We will not spare any official involved, whether they are from the

wildlife department right here in the ministry, the Tanzania Revenue

Authority (TRA), or any such institutions,’’ he asserted.

According to international wildlife laws, seized animal trophies have to

be destroyed wherever they are seized, in order to discourage the

smugglers involved.

According to Tarimo, the same international wildlife laws also say that

if such animal trophies are captured having been transported illegally,

they become of ’zero value’. Meaning that this consignment seized in

Vietnam valued at approximately 40bn/-, may now be of little or no value

at all.

’’I am deeply concerned about the elephants that were killed in order

for the tusks to be poached. However, as for the consignment in Vietnam,

it has lost its value from the moment it was seized,’’ he remarked.

Article at the following link:

http://www.thisday.co.tz/News/5505.html

Tags: CITES, illegal trade, INTERPOL, Ivory, ivory seisure, KWS, LATF, Tanzania, vietnam, wildlifedirect

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Category: Ivory, Trade, elephants, enforcement, poaching, wildlife trade | Date: Mar 16 2009 | By: baraza

A massive consignment of ivory from the port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is about to be auctioned in Vietnam, but nobody in the Tanzanian authority seems to know anything about it. A senior customs agency official in Hai Phong City, Vu Hoang Duong, said that the illegally-imported elephant tusks from Tanzania may be auctioned after the Vietnamese Institute for Ecology and Natural Resources completes certain tests

The consignment of tusks initially left the port of Dar es Salaam in late January this year, was transported by sea via Malaysia, and finally landed at the Dinh Vu Port in Hai Phong on February 28. The tusks, packed in 114 cardboard boxes labelled recycled plastic totalled 1,244 pieces (6,232 kg). The consignment was seized by customs authorities from a ship anchored at the Hai Phong Port.

Peculiarly, the government in Dar es Salaam has said it is completely unaware of the loss of their ivory, and of the impending auction.

According to one Tanzanian authority wherever animal trophies are illegally exported or imported from one country to another, the consignment is seized, the smuggler(s) arrested, and the consignment is auctioned. According to Ezekiel Maige, The Deputy Minister for Tourism and Natural Resources, revenue earned from the auction is then divided according to any standing agreements between the country where the consignment originated and the country of destination.

That sounds very fishy to me. If this were true it would be the perfect way of moving illegal goods - especially if you are a corrupt government official.  In all my years working on CITES trade issues, I have ever heard of such an arrangement - especially concerning CITES listed species. What I’ve observed is that any animal trophies smuggled from one country being seized in another, are handled according to international law. The disposal of the specimens, animals or trophies are agreed by the two countries. Usually ivory is returned to country of origin or stored in vaults for safe keeping.  It is indeed very strange that Vietnam would auction ivory seized from any country without even informing the relevant authorities of the country of origin.
The saddest part of the story is that Tanzanians are lamenting the loss of billions of Tanzanian shillings through an auction in Vietnam.

Nobody seems to be concerned that this ivory may represents over 600 individual elephants, where they came from, how they died, nor the fate of the people involved in the illicit trade.

Vietnamese authorities are said to have been unable to contact the director of Phuc Thien Ngan company, Vu Ngoc Tuan, who is the registered consignee of the tusks. However, one local newspaper said it interviewed Tuan in his office on Monday this week.According to the newspaper, Tuan said he knew nothing of the tusks, and that he had no business relationship with the sender of the tusks. He said authorities have not been able to contact him because he has been busy in recent days.

It is likely that an international smuggling network is at work here and Vietnam where recent reports of soaring ivory prices is likely to be driving the illegal killings of elephants and illicit ivory trade. Prices in Vietnam were reported to be as high as $1863/kg for small cut pieces and $1500/kg for whole tusks, with carved pieces even higher. The legal trade of ivory last year in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa attraceted prices on tenth of this!

While the Tanzanian’s may just want the money, it is important that the source of this ivory is identified. Genetic tests can determine if this ivory is coming from Tanzania or elsewhere like DR Congo where elephant populations have crashed from 100,000 to fewer than 20,000 in the last 50 years. In conservation circles Tanzania is known to be notorious for illegal trade in birds, ivory, skins, apes and timber from other countries.

Tags: illegal trade, Ivory, vietnam, wildlifedirect

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