By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 29 2004 (IPS)

Certain conservationists in Africa say they will oppose any move to revive commercial exploitation of elephants, at the 13th Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which opens in the Thai capital, Bangkok, in the first week of October.

An elephant in Chobe National Park, northern Botswana. (Photo: Henner Frankenfeld) Credit: PictureNET Africa

Along with South Africa, Namibia is also calling for trade in elephant leather and hair to be permitted.

The trade in elephant products was banned in 1989 in response to the dreadful toll taken on herds by poachers in search of ivory. But Namibia, South Africa and Botswana were granted permission during the 2002 CITES meeting in Santiago, Chile, to sell 60 tonnes of ivory that they had stockpiled. Most of this ivory had been confiscated from poachers.

Similar proposals from Zimbabwe and Zambia were rejected by CITES, because of fears that the two countries lacked the ability to guard their elephant herds – and ensure that ivory sales would not lead to a new wave of poaching.

As the Bangkok conference gets underway, South Africa and Botswana are also lobbying for permission to sell another batch of ivory.

“This will send a wrong message to consumers and traders, thereby encouraging trade in all elephant products. The Namibian and South African proposals should be totally rejected,” Jason Bell-Leask, Southern Africa director of the Massachusetts-based International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told journalists last week. He was speaking in the South African commercial hub of Johannesburg.

Instead, Bell-Leask believes that the 20-year moratorium on ivory sales proposed by Kenya will provide a safety net that African elephants are in need of.

“The moratorium will also change the focus of the debate from being trade-centric to one in which the real threats to elephants, their habitats and people’s livelihoods, are seriously considered,” he added.

According to a 2002 report by the World Conservation Union – headquartered in Switzerland – the population of African elephants has dropped from an estimated 1.3 million in 1981 to around 625,000.

But, not all conservationists share Bell-Leask’s fears that a controlled trade in ivory will inevitably lead to a resumption of widespread poaching.

“The three countries – Namibia, South Africa and Botswana – have managed their animals so well. Poaching has been minimized (and) I believe they should be rewarded,” Gerhard Verdoorn, a top South African conservationist, told IPS in a telephone interview Tuesday, Sep. 28.

“I will support a limited delisting which must be strictly controlled. And it must be managed by the national parks,” he added.

Nonetheless, there’s no denying that the threat posed by poachers is a real one.

In recent months, IFAW has documented 18 major cases of poaching and trafficking of smuggled ivory from Africa. These include the October 2003 seizure by Hong Kong customs officers of almost two tonnes of ivory hidden in a container that arrived from Tanzania. This was the largest ivory seizure in Hong Kong in a decade.

In addition, 65 tusks originating from Africa were seized by customs officers at Bangkok’s international airport in July 2003.

In July this year, two Zambian businesswomen were arrested for illegal possession of 691 pieces of ivory destined for South Africa.

Verdoorn believes the successful conservation of elephants stems from good parks management and close cooperation with communities that surround the reserves where elephant are located.

“In Africa you need to be pragmatic. Animals can destroy crops grown at the edge of a national game park. And what do you do in such a situation? When you sit in America sometimes you don’t realise the problems that ordinary Africans go through everyday,” he says.

Verdoorn also supports the culling of elephants to control the population of herds in national parks – even though this practice was suspended in South Africa in 1994.

The government’s policy on culling is currently under review, and recommendations will be made to conservation officials before the end of this year on whether the moratorium on culling should be lifted.

Efforts by IPS to get comment from South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism on the controversy surrounding ivory sales have failed. A news conference on this issue that the department had scheduled for Sep. 23 was also cancelled at the last moment.

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