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Ivory Trade Ban May Be Overturned This Month |
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Fiona Tudor Price National Geographic Today |
| November 6, 2002 |
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In a secret location in South Africa's Kruger National Park, a vault holds 36 tons of elephant ivory and rhino horn valued at around $3 million dollars. By international rules, South Africa cannot sell any of the wildlife treasure. But that may change. "When we were still allowed to sell ivory, we sold it at auction once or twice a year," said Herman Coetzee, for 32 years the custodian of the ivory at Kruger, ensuring that each piece is registered, documented, and traceable—in anticipation of the day when trade would resume. "But since the ban" in 1989, he said, "we haven't sold any ivory." The fate of the vault's contents is in the balance this week and next in Santiago, Chile, where 160 nations have gathered to discuss wildlife trade at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a UN-affiliated group, that convenes every two and a half years. On the agenda are 59 proposals involving the minke whale, yellow-naped Amazon parrot, bigleaf mahogany, Malaysian giant turtle, and Patagonian toothfish, among others. Perhaps no proposal, though, is more controversial than one to resume the ivory trade. The debate is complex and the stakes, not only for elephants, are high. Profit and Preservation "There's a war fought over the elephants here—men die on both sides, poachers and anti-poaching rangers, with a lot of elephants in between," said Daphne Sheldrick, founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a wildlife orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia want to resume the ivory trade and use the proceeds to fund elephant conservation. On the other side, India and Kenya argue that resuming trade would encourage poaching, threaten elephant populations, and, consequently, harm Kenya's booming safari industry. Resuming the ivory trade would allow certain countries to sell their old stockpiles—from legal kills of elephants or natural deaths—and establish annual quotas. "Ivory is not a product that people can eat or use for medicinal purposes, said Paula Kahumbu, the CITES coordinator for the Kenya Wildlife Service. "It's a product of vanity—made into necklaces or game boards, things where alternatives could be used." The 1989 ban arose after poaching devastated elephant populations during the 1980s; the number of African elephants fell from 1.5 million to 600,000. In Kenya, elephants declined from approximately 120,000 to fewer than 19,000, Kahumbu said. Conservation efforts, including vigorous anti-poaching efforts, have helped replenish elephant populations. Now the debate is raging about whether a resumed ivory trade, even under strict controls, encourages poaching. "The possibility of trade in ivory reopening has already resulted in ivory stockpiling and illegal killing of elephants in various parts of Africa," Kahumbu said. Asian markets are especially hungry for ivory. In 2002, China, Hong Kong, and Japan recorded their largest ivory seizures since the ban was instituted in 1989, according to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a non-government organization based in Washington, D.C., and London. Anti-poaching Militia The South Africans counter that protecting elephants comes at a cost that the ivory trade can help defray. "We in the Kruger have been very fortunate, we have finances to be able to back our operations," said Ken Maggs, who heads anti-poaching efforts in South Africa's national parks. Protected reserves, aerial patrols, and ground militia are among those efforts. Other countries, he pointed out, may not be so fortunate. "The big difference between South Africa and Kenya is that [South Africa's] elephants are in a very few protected areas," Kahumbu said. "They only have 10,000 elephants, Kenya has almost 30,000 elephants." "And if the South African proposal to trade in ivory results in greater threats to our elephants, it means that we are the ones bearing the cost, not South Africa," she added. The Kenyan Wildlife Service is a highly trained paramilitary company, operating on a strict "shoot to kill" policy. "One of the most expensive items in our annual budget is protection of wildlife," Kahumbu said. In 1989, to indicate the Kenya Wildlife Service's commitment to a ban on ivory, Richard Leakey, the famous paleontologist and then director of the agency, built a pyre of more than 2,000 tusks—some $3 million dollars worth—and set it on fire. A monument to the burn, erected in Nairobi National Park, demonstrates Kenyans' refusal to put a price on ivory. That price is necessary, the South Africans say, to ensure the future of the elephants. In faraway Santiago, the issues are on the table. National Geographic Today, 7 p.m. ET/PT in the United States, is a daily news journal available only on the National Geographic Channel. Click here to learn more about it. Bookmark this page for National Geographic News stories updated daily: Go>> Related Stories from Nationalgeographic.com: Snorkeling Elephants and the Secrets of Breathing Pheromone in Urine Spurs Mating in Elephants "Elephant Excess" NGM photo gallery Elephants May "Talk" Via Vibrations Painting Elephants Get Online Gallery (with photo gallery) Opinion: How Do You Miss a Whole Elephant Species? 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