Experts from nine southern and east African countries agreed on Wednesday to recommend to their governments that they seek permission to sell their ivory stockpiles.
They also recommended the transfer of elephants from high populations zones to countries and areas with low elephant stocks, Botswana’s director of wildlife and national parks, Joseph Matlhare, told AFP at a three-day meeting in the northern Botswana town of Kasane.
The officials at the conference represent Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, which are members of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, which is backing the proposal.
”We have all agreed that we have to sell our stockpiles and what we have to do is to work out the modalities,” Matlhare said.
Five southern African countries had already proposed to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) that they be allowed to sell existing stocks of elephant ivory.
The proposal, a perennial one from a region where an over-abundance of elephants in some regions play havoc with farmland and crops, has already run into fierce opposition from critics who say it would encourage poaching in countries where the elephants are endangered.
”We have to work on the modalities of lobbying those outside our own region, taking into consideration that the decision are made in the individual countries before the Cites conference,” Matlhare said, adding: ”we have to work as a region and vote as a block like the European Union.” – Sapa-AFP