An American charity has offered to buy South Africa’s stockpile of ivory and burn it, in an attempt to stem the slaughter of thousands of elephants in parts of Africa and Asia.
The Humane Society of the United States, which has a membership of 7,5-million, offered in March to buy the stockpile. The idea was to burn it in a ceremonial bonfire during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
However, at the time, talks be-tween the charity and South African National Parks (SANParks), which technically owns the stockpile, broke down over the price. SANParks says the Humane Society offered $250 000 for the 30 tons of ivory it wants to sell, which ”is a joke”. SANParks estimates the price tag to be closer to $5-million on the international market.
Mavuso Msimang, head of SANParks, is enthusiastic about the proposal. ”It would be fantastic. We are not in favour of seeing people wearing ivory trinkets and bracelets,” he says.
South Africa is one of five Southern African states that will apply next week to the international wildlife regulatory authority, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), to resume trade in ivory and other elephant products.
Opponents say the proposed legal trade will see an upsurge in illegal trade and more elephant killings.
Former Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) director Richard Leakey and President Daniel arap Moi burnt about $3-million worth of elephant tusks in 1988 in a highly publicised statement against the ivory trade. Within three years Leakey raised about $300-million for KWS, mainly as a result of the international goodwill generated by the gesture.
”The Kenyan experience showed us you can raise 10 times what the ivory is worth just because of the publicity,” says Gareth Pyne-James, a wildlife filmmaker who is working with the Humane Society and Johnnic Communications to raise $2-billion for SANParks through an ambitious educational initiative called My Acre of Africa. He is obviously keen to use a burning pyre of elephant tusks as a marketing tool.
SANParks and the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism will propose to the Cites meeting in Santiago, Chile, that they be given the go-ahead to sell 30 tons of the 37-ton ivory stockpile kept at Skukuza. The tusks come from past culling programmes in the Kruger National Park, ”problem” animals and others that died of natural causes.
They are also proposing to sell 150 tons of elephant hides and an annual quota of two tons of ivory, although the latter proposal appears negotiable.
”Collecting two tons a years without culling elephants may be an unrealistic target,” says Hector Magome, head of conservation services at SANParks.
If the Humane Society deal flounders and Cites gives the green light, Japan will probably be the main bidder for the stockpile. After the first experimental sale of government-owned ivory by Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe was approved by Cites in 1997, Japanese importers bought 49 tons of the 59 tons offered for sale.
Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia are also proposing to sell off various amounts of stockpiled ivory and annual quotas of tusks. The five Southern African countries intend to present a united front at the Cites meeting, which runs from November 3 to 11, by supporting each others’ proposals.
Opponents say the de facto resumption of a legal ivory trade proposed by Southern Africa will encourage poaching of elephants, particularly in countries where they are most threatened — West, Central and East Africa, as well as Asia. Kenya and India, as well as an international coalition of 65 NGOs called the Species Survival Network, are leading the opposition to Southern Africa.
”In the 1980s the African elephant population halved from 1,2-million to about 600 000 animals … [Now] there may be as few as 300 000 elephants in Africa. In Asia elephant populations are even more under threat and there are currently less than 50 000 Asian elephants left in the wild,” says the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
By Cites’s own count, trade in illegal ivory has been increasing recently, largely due to a huge demand in China. The agency says 12,4 tons of illegal ivory were seized around the world in the first nine months of this year, against 14 tons in the whole of last year. The countries most involved, either as destinations for the ivory or as sources, are China, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Thailand.
”There is a market in China that is enormous and growing for working ivory products,” Cites deputy secretary general, Jim Armstrong, told a news conference recently. China’s increasing role in the illegal trade reflects the country’s growing affluence, he added.
But Msimang challenges a correlation between the proposed ivory sales and a resurgence in illegal trade. ”Even when the sale of ivory from African elephants was completely banned [from 1989 to 1997], the illegal trade never came to an end. It just comes into the spotlight at times like this.
”Our proposal is for a strictly supervised one-off sale. Monitoring of poaching and elephant management in South Africa is working well. We should not be punished for trying hard.”