Ivory trade conference - elephants in danger again?

At a conference to be held in Doha, Qatar in a few months, representatives of several African countries will request licenses to trade in ivory

In about three months there will be a convention that will deal with endangered species. The conference to be held in Doha (Qatar) will deal, among other things, with the possibility of allowing the sale of elephant tusks, the sale of the raw material for ivory products is a cause of sharp dispute between African countries that have herds of elephants and some of them have stockpiles of tusks, tusks confiscated from illegal poachers, or those removed from elephants that have been "diluted" ”, or died a natural death.

The black market in ivory is flourishing, a situation that pushes countries with a stable population of elephants that are not in danger, to press for permission to sell the tusks they legally possess, a sale that will bring in a lot of money for the countries, money that the countries say will be directed to nature conservation activities in general as well as elephant conservation.

Tanzania and Zambia asked the "International Organization for the Control of Trade in Species" (CITES), CITES, for permission to sell 112 tons of tusks, 90 tons (Tanzania) and 22 tons (Zambia).

This is a request for an exemption from the ban imposed in 1989, a step taken to protect the elephant population in Africa, (as well as the rhinoceros population), the ban caused conflicts between countries with different numbers of elephants and different levels of risk to the population.

The accepted estimate is that until the 19th century there were about 5 million elephants living in Africa. Today their number is estimated at about 500 thousand, more than half of them in southern African countries, while in West and East African countries, only a few hundred and sometimes dozens in each country. In some cases, in some countries, the elephants disappeared completely. In Burundi, Gambia, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, there are no elephants.

The previous Sights convention was in The Hague in 2007 and there was a verification between African countries, a verification at the end of which a compromise was reached according to which: the ban on the sale of tusks will be extended for 9 years, but: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana will be allowed to sell (to China and Japan) a sale One-off of 108 tons of tusks.

Organizations for the protection of elephants claim that this sale has strengthened the ivory market and as a result demand has increased and activity on the black market has increased.

One of the countries that opposes allowing sales is Kenya, where about 300 elephants have been slaughtered in recent years. If the killing of elephants continues at the current rate... the elephants will disappear from most parts of Africa already these days. That's why Kanya's position is that a sales permit will give a boost of encouragement to the poachers, a boost that will perpetuate the black market. Therefore, Kenya (and seven other countries) requests to continue the trade ban for another 20 years.

On the other hand, the Tanzanian authorities estimate that the number of elephants within their country increased from 55,000 in 1989 to 137,000 in 2006, an increase that causes trouble for farmers, which turns the farmers against the conservation bodies.

The sale of tusks that were caught (from poachers) or collected from elephants that died (natural death), will allow the residents to share in the proceeds from the sale and thus arouse their attention to the importance of preserving nature.

In a framed article, it is worth mentioning that one of the results of the ban on trade in elephant tusks, as a result of the activities of guarding and preserving elephants, and because of the growing demand, the poachers turned to other "tusk owners": warthogs and especially wild horses (hippos) were hunted by the hundreds...not for their meat but for their horns.

Traffic is the organization that supervises and enforces the bans on trade in wild species. According to the organization, the trade in ivory has been steadily increasing since 2004. Elsewhere I wrote about The quantities of tusks caught, it is clear that these "perceptions" indicate increasing and increasing amounts of tusks being sold, that is, increasing and increasing numbers of elephants being slaughtered.

The trade involves criminal organizations that recognized the "business opportunity" to engage in trade where the raw material - the tusks - are sold at prices that reach 1,000 dollars per kilo.

Because of the difficulty of identifying "legal ivory" versus "poached ivory", it would be correct to ban the trade in a sweeping manner, a ban that would save the elephant population from extinction.