A proposal to ease restrictions on the sale of South Africa’s rhino and elephant products is likely to top the list submitted to Cites, writes Fiona Macleod
A South African proposal to lift restrictions on the sale of rhino products could be met with heated opposition from international environmental bodies.
The country is also proposing to ease the restrictions on trading in South Africa’s elephant products so the Kruger National Park can sell off its stockpiles of ivory and hides. The suggestion is they will be sold to one country only – probably Japan – and the money will be ploughed back into conservation.
The proposals are contained in a draft document which the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism is in the process of finalising in consultation with other government departments and conservation NGOs.
They are to be submitted to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) secretariat in Switzerland by November 12, ahead of the next Cites meeting in Nairobi in April 2000.
As is the case every few years when the governments that have signed the convention meet, there are bound to be heated debates in the next six months about whether elephants should be culled and whether legal trade in endangered species encourages poaching.
Private owners of white rhinos – who own about 1 785 of the animals – are particularly keen on the rhino proposal, because they say the cost of conserving rhinos is prohibitive without some form of financial return.
The draft proposal claims South Africa’s overall white rhino population of about 7 900 could provide much, if not all, of the 1 200kg to 2 000kg of rhino horn currently being consumed in traditional medicines each year in China, Taiwan and South Korea.
This proposal is likely to be the subject of heated opposition, not only because the illegal trade in rhino horn is so difficult to counter but because of fears about its impact on the highly endangered, and more vulnerable, Asian rhino populations.
Other proposals being discussed are restricted quotas for hunting black rhinos, leopards and cheetahs, and Cites protection for an endangered colophon beetle which is endemic to the Western Cape.
The department argues in favour of trade in rhino horn that “most South African populations of both black and white rhinos are protected by intensive, sophisticated and expensive security programmes which effectively deter the escalation of poaching”.
While this statement is open to dispute – the police’s endangered species protection unit has confiscated more rhino horns in the past eight months than the whole of last year – the government is doing little to allay public fears that it has virtually no control over a burgeoning demand for trade in endangered species of all kinds.
At the root of these perceptions is the fact that although South Africa has signed the Cites agreements and other international biodiversity treaties, it does not have the administrative back-up to enforce them. Behind the veneer of a sophisticated system lies a state of chaos that is wide open to exploitation.
Take the recent case of a crocodile farmer who applied to provincial authorities for permission to export 200 salted crocodile skins. To his surprise, when his export permits arrived they gave him permission to export 200 salted cheetah skins – about half the total number of cheetahs in the whole country; and they are listed by Cites as extremely endangered animals which may not be hunted or traded for commercial purposes.
It may have been just a slip of the pen, but it’s the kind of mistake unscrupulous wildlife traders are using to their advantage.
One of their favourite scams is to send a consignment of birds or reptiles from another African country to a South African airport for further export to Europe or the United States, with the paperwork all in order.
When nobody’s looking, they switch part of the consignment with a crate of local endangered species and get rid of the paperwork. When an airport or customs official notices the paperwork is missing, he has no choice but to follow the rules and send the consignment back where it came from – in the process unwittingly exporting the crate of South African endangered species.
Public fears about the sustainability of the trade in endangered animals are at fever pitch this month with the news that at least four dealers are sending out large shipments of animals, many of them caught in the wild, to China.
China has opened five new safari parks in the past six years, and appears to have an insatiable appetite for African wildlife. The demand for birds, reptiles and small mammals in Europe and the United States also appears to be on the increase.
Conservation law enforcement officers are thin on the ground, and their hands are tied once the provincial authorities have signed valid export permits. These permits are issued on a province-to- province basis, in accordance with five ordinances that date back to the old apartheid provincial structures.
The endangered species unit’s Inspector Sunelle Bruwer has undertaken the huge task of checking all the permits issued in the past two years to South Africa’s best-known dealer, Riccardo Ghiazza. She received folders of paperwork from the North-West authorities which she’s trying to reconcile on a computer system.
“The permit system is a mess,” she says. “For instance, there’s no way of telling whether permits granted are in fact used, or that they’re not being used over and over again. There are so many ways to cover up.”
Bruwer and other conservationists are calling for a national permit system to be put in place urgently, so that every permit granted in relation to wild animals – particularly rare and endangered species – is entered into a centralised database and is immediately accessible. In the meantime, they say, there should be a short amnesty for all dealers to declare what animals they have.
The national authority in charge of issuing permits would take advice on whether trade in rare species is sustainable from conservation officials based in the provinces.
Public concerns about the chaos in the present permit system are heightened by the fact that, where details are available, they are shrouded in secrecy. The provincial authorities are reluctant to divulge any details of the permits they issue because, they say, this will prejudice the commercial interests of the dealers.