South Africa is taking the credit for the decision to relax the ban on the international ivory trade, but animal rights groups are outraged, reports Eddie Koch
THIS week’s landmark decision by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) to relax its ban on the international ivory trade is a diplomatic coup for Deputy Minister of Environment Affairs Peter Mokaba, and will place South African conservationists under intense pressure to resume elephant culling in the Kruger National Park.
But animal rights groups have slammed the decision, saying it would send a message to poaching syndicates in Africa that there is now a market for elephant tusks. They predicted a massive upsurge in illegal poaching around the continent and an elephant slaughter in the next few months.
“This is a major breakthrough for African governments and their people. It will have a dramatic impact on our ability to preserve wildlife,” said Rams Rammutla, operations director for the National Parks Board’s northern parks. Cites has been deeply divided at its two-week summit in Harare over proposals by Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia that they be allowed to resume trade in ivory.
The countries say they have such an abundance of the mammals that they can be safely culled and their ivory used to generate desperately needed revenues for conservation and rural development. Cites finally accepted a South African-backed proposal that elephants be downlisted from the Cites Appendix One, a category of animals whose products may not be traded, to Appendix Two, a list of animals that can be the subject of limited international trade.
The proposal adds that no ivory will actually be sold until stringent controls are in place to ensure that endangered populations of elephant are not shot and to prevent the misappropriation of revenue from ivory deals. A waiting period of 18 months has been stipulated during which no tusks may be sold — and then the system of management and trade control will have to undergo stringent scrutiny by a Cites monitoring committees before trade is allowed.
The world body, set up 25 years ago to control trade in endangered plants and animals, rejected by just three votes a resolution earlier this week to transfer elephants from Appendix One to Two.
The key achievement of the South Africa delegation was to add policing and control mechanisms to the proposal that were strong enough to convince countries that trade can take place in a regulated way. “This is a feather in the cap for Mokaba because he played a key role in coming up with a consensus position among African States,” Rammutla said.
But Chris Styles, campaign co-ordinator for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the move would encourage a new wave of poaching in Africa.
“It is quite possible we are going to see a new wave of poaching and possible extinction of elephants outside of Southern Africa,” said Styles.