Nations OK Restored Ban on Ivory Sales

In a surprise move, African nations Monday reached a compromise deal on the controversial trade in ivory, agreeing to restore a ban on any sales until an effective system to combat elephant poaching is implemented.

Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa withdrew proposals that would have allowed them to sell off their stockpiles of elephant tusks. Kenya, joined by India, said it would not oppose the trade in live elephants and their hides.

The consensus was reached shortly before delegates at the 150-nation U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, were to debate the issue. Both sides said the compromise was a victory.

“The message to the poachers is that the prospect of dealing in ivory illegally is zero at the moment, and the prospects for the future are not certain,” said Nehemiah Rotich, head of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Elephants in this East African nation, which relies heavily on revenue from wildlife tourism, were decimated by poaching in the 1970s and 1980s.

But delegations from the southern African nations that wanted some ivory sales also said they were satisfied because moves to place an all-out ban on ivory had been quashed. The issue will be raised again at the next CITES meeting, about three years from now; in the meantime, the countries will be trying to establish an effective way to monitor the killing of elephants and the ivory trade.

“We have achieved the principle that trade in ivory is an option,” said Mohamed Valli Moosa, South Africa’s minister of environmental affairs and tourism.

The sale of elephant hide was agreed to because it takes much longer for poachers to skin an elephant than it does for them to extract or hack off the elephant’s tusks, and it is much less lucrative. Few poachers are expected to engage in the hide trade.

Environmental observers who were privy to the closed sessions said that the southern African nations compromised because they anticipated that their proposals would have been defeated. A two-thirds majority of all the CITES member states would have been needed.

Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe--all of which have abundant elephant populations--were allowed by CITES to make one-time ivory sales to Japan last year. South Africa had joined their push this year to win the right to sell its stocks.

Those southern African nations have argued that the money raised by limited and controlled sale of ivory from culled animals or those that die naturally could be applied to conservation and community development, actually helping elephant populations.

Thabo Masipa, who represents a forum for communities and nongovernmental organizations in southern Africa, said prohibiting the sale of ivory would deny rural communities the right to use their natural resources for their own benefit.

“Because of their poor status, the communities can only use what they have in their surroundings to uplift themselves,” Masipa said.

But Kenya, backed by India, said that last year’s ivory auctions had led to an increase in elephant poaching and thriving illegal markets for the animal’s body parts. Rotich said his East African nation seized about 4,200 pounds of ivory in 1999 alone, almost two-thirds of the total amount seized in the preceding nine years.

If the ivory trade was legal, said Michael Wamithi, Nairobi-based regional director for the U.S.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, “the message that gets to poachers is that now there is ivory trade internationally and they can go out and start poaching.”

Rotich and other wildlife specialists have argued that the experiment to allow limited ivory sales failed in part because it was permitted to go ahead before critical monitoring and control mechanisms, which had been agreed upon in 1997, had been put in place.

African elephant populations were cut in half in the 1970s and 1980s, leading conservationists to push for an all-out ban on trade in ivory. CITES approved the ban in 1989 in an attempt to save the species from extinction.

It has taken Kenya a decade to raise its elephant population from 19,000 to 29,000, still small in comparison with Botswana’s herd of about 106,000.

“There should be no further ivory sale until there is an adequate monitoring system,” said famed elephant conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton of the British charity Save the Elephants.

But delegates from the southern African states vowed to continue their fight to exploit their lucrative natural resource.

“The war is not lost; there is still tomorrow,” said Tangeni Erkana, the head of Namibia’s delegation. “We will come back.”