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THE night after governments meeting in Nairobi last week decided to continue
the ban on international trade in ivory, a woman tending her cattle not far from
the city was trampled to death by a rogue elephant. It was a sad reminder that
our relationship with the planet’s largest land mammal is more complex than the
debates on poaching and the ivory trade might have suggested.

Closing the conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES), its secretary general, Willem Wijnstekers, noted that delegates
have swung away from “sustainable use” of wildlife, towards narrow
protectionism. The mood was set by the Kenyan hosts, who are adamantly opposed
to the international trade in ivory
(see p 6).

There are, of course, times when a total ban on trade in wild animals and
animal products is essential to prevent a species from going extinct. (Though
perhaps the world should consider paying compensation when it deems such a
service is needed for the global good.) But the widespread assumption among
environmentalists that a total ban is the desired outcome is, to use their own
terminology, not sustainable.

There is little point in protecting elephants from poachers if the animals
are then pitched into an equally deadly conflict with humans over land. Through
most of the 1990s, Kenyan park wardens already shoot more elephants than
poachers do, mostly to protect farmers in the wide areas outside national parks,
where the animals spend most of their time.

Calls for such culls may well grow. Development of land around Nairobi
National Park looks likely to cut off the migration routes of rhino, zebra and
antelope, while farther west, wheat fields increasingly surround the Masai Mara
game reserve. These are the real “enemies” of wildlife.

But to talk of enemies is to miss the point. In most places at most times,
animals and humans have to coexist. Wild animals have to earn their keep if they
are to compete for land—the more so because the charismatic species that
the world most wants to save live mostly in poor countries and among poor
people.

Earning their keep may mean as little as posing for photos. But it may also
mean managing stocks so that animals can be hunted for their meat, hides, bones,
organs and glands. “Use it or lose it,” the slogan goes.

Trade bans are not a sign of success but of failed wildlife
management—and they can even become an excuse for perpetuating poor
management. At the Nairobi meeting, southern African states were eager to sell
ivory from elephants culled to protect their savannah from fast-growing elephant
populations—a testament to their successful wildlife policies. They are
entitled to wonder why the world seems to want to penalise them for these
successes—to make them pay for the failure of other countries to protect
their elephant herds from poachers.

CITES’s decision not to let the ivory trade resume, at least until new
monitoring systems are in place to track poachers and ivory hauls makes
pragmatic sense. The poaching horrors of the 1980s, before there was any trade
ban, are still fresh in the memory. But the aim of CITES—for African
elephants and other species for which trade is prohibited—should now be to
lift such bans, to raise the economic value of these animals to local
communities and so maximise their chances of long-term survival.

Why manage wildlife if the burden outweighs the benefit? It is a question too
few environmentalists think to ask, let alone answer. It is not the best moment
to praise Zimbabwe’s government, but much of that country’s recent success in
managing its wildlife has come from ceding control of animals outside its parks
to the people who live among those animals.

This is contrary to much green dogma. But not all. There is a schism at the
heart of the environment movement. On one side sit the preservationists and
animal rights advocates with their parks, fences, bans and armed game wardens.
On the other, sit the advocates of “sustainable development” who are determined
on local control of natural resources.

Life is never quite that simple, of course. Nobody—whether British
farmer or Masai herder—has absolute rights over their own land and what
lives on it. But it makes sense for people to profit from their local wildlife
wherever possible. As soon as anti-poaching safeguards are in place, controlled
trade in elephant ivory should be allowed to resume.