THE dispute between African nations over trading in elephant ivory will be
resolved by scientists. At last week’s meeting in Nairobi, the 150-nation
Convention on Trade in Endangered Species unanimously backed two monitoring
systems designed to spot any upsurge in elephant poaching or illegal ivory
sales. The monitoring bodies will rule on future disputes over ivory trade.
The breakthrough came when Kenya dropped its calls for a permanent ban on the
sale of elephant products, including meat and hides, while Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Namibia and South Africa temporarily accepted a continued ban on regular ivory
sales.
The two sides disagree on whether trade can restart without encouraging
poaching. In future, the issue will be decided by two new bodies: a $2
million-a-year scheme called Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants, which will
track elephant populations in 60 locations in Africa and Asia, and the Elephant
Trade Information System, which will keep tabs on ivory seizures around the
world.
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Kenya’s acceptance of monitoring should cool a heated statistical row. Kenya
claimed that a one-off sale of ivory by three southern African countries to
Japan last year, which was sanctioned by CITES, had triggered renewed poaching
and illegal sales. The claim raised fears of a return to the rampant poaching of
the 1980s, before CITES outlawed ivory sales. This angered southern African
countries, where elephant populations are soaring and sales of culled ivory
could fund wildlife management.
But at the Nairobi meeting, Kenya was strongly criticised by elephant
specialists who said that official Kenyan data did not support its claim that
poaching had increased
(91av, 8 April, p 20). It emerged that
Kenya’s claim to have seized 2 tonnes of ivory last year—a big increase on
recent years—is misleading. “In fact some of the seizures took place in
1998, and one in 1997,” says one elephant trade expert.
The four pro-trade countries still want to sell surplus ivory. “We feel it is
unfair if our effective elephant management practices are punished because of
law and order failures in other countries,” says Tangeni Erkana, environment
minister of Namibia, where elephant numbers have doubled to 10 000 in 15 years.
“Trade would be of direct benefit to the elephants and people,” Erkana says. The
southern African nations plan to resume their demands to be allowed to sell
ivory at the next CITES meeting in 2002.
But in Nairobi, “the atmosphere swayed towards the protectionist direction
and against sustainable use,” according to Willem Wijnstekers, secretary general
of CITES. This applied to other species, too. Japan and Norway failed to win
CITES approval for harvesting some fast-growing stocks of minke and grey whales,
despite a DNA technique put forward by Japan to allow inspectors to distinguish
between different stocks of whales. “People do not want whales to be
killed—that is a reality and it played its part here,” says
Wijnstekers.
