IVORY SMUGGLING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 720, 21 December 1933, Page 3

IVORY SMUGGLING

("Posi" Special Correspondent.)

STEPS TO CHECK TRAFFIC ACROSS AFRICAN BOUNDARIES.

London, November 4. A proposal designed to prevent the smuggling of ivory and rhinoceros horn was discussed by the International Conference for the Proteetion of the Fauna and Flora of Africa, at the House of Lords yeat-erday. The proposal is regarded by the British Government, its sponsor, as one of the most important in the draft convention. It provides that ivory and rhinoceros horn which is found "and such ivory and horn forming part of animals killed accidentally or killed in defence of any person" shall become Government property. Sir William Gowers, submitting an amendment, pointed out that it was not possihle to police the enormous frontiers of African territory. As long as there were smugglers, they or poachers would shoot the ivorybearing animals. The method, he said, was to smuggle ivory from illegally-killed animals across an international boundary. The smugglers then produced the ivory openly, and sold it at a profit on the 'strength of a statement — which it was ganerally impossible to confute and disprove — that the ivory had been found, and was therefore lawfully in their possession.