Ivory ban to stay

Forest and Bird, Volume 23, Issue 2, 1 May 1992, Page 6

Ivory ban to stay

Source:

New Scientist

Oryx,

THE BAN on elephant ivory trading is to remain after a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) held in Japan in March. The ban was put in place in 1989 because of considerable evidence that African elephants had become an endangered species. The population had crashed in ten years by almost 50 percent to only about half a million, mainly due to the ivory trade. The six states at the southern end of the African elephant’s range — Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Malawi and Zambia — argued for a lifting of the ban on the grounds that numbers had increased substantially in the last two years. They also claimed that the income from ivory was needed to manage their elephant reserves. The remainder of the 35 states with African elephant populations argued for the ban to stay. The opponents of the ban have healthy stable elephant populations which are not seriously endangered. However in East, Central and West Africa, elephants have been grossly over-exploited and many local populations are still in danger of extinction. The rapid decline of these northern populations has slowed since the ban came into effect because demand has been reduced, the price of ivory has dropped by 95 percent and more money has been put into anti-poaching efforts. The worry about opening up even the southern populations to a controlled ivory trade is that demand will rise, the price will increase and poaching would inevitably start again in the northern populations. Advocates of continuing the ban also pointed out the

financial value of elephants as a living resource. In Kenya an elephant is worth over $14,000 in income from tourism for every year of its life, giving it a potential value of nearly $900,000. The ivory from the tusks of that elephant would be worth only $1,000 at the pre-ban price. In Kenya alone elephantrelated tourism brings in almost $200 million a year — more than 30 times what the entire continent made from dead elephants before the ban.

The major concern, after the vote to continue the ban, is that countries such as Zimbabwe, who in culling their herds have built up ivory stocks worth over $30 million, will start selling the ivory despite the ban.