Tanzania plans to sell 99 tonnes of confiscated elephant tusks in government stores to raise funds for conservation efforts and development projects, a senior official on said Friday.
The ivory was seized from poachers or extracted from carcasses of elephants that died of natural causes, said Zakhia Meghji, Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism.
Tanzania has initiated a complex procedure to license the sale through an international treaty governing trade in endangered or threatened plants and animals. Trade in most new ivory is banned under the voluntary Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.
”We want to get rid of the ivory haul to raise money to assist in development projects such as health and education in very, very poor communities living nearer to the game parks,” Meghji said.
”There is no point in holding the confiscated ivory when it can positively transform the lives of our poor villagers for the better.”
Tanzania is home to one of the largest populations of African elephants, the world’s biggest terrestrial animal. The elephant’s tusks — large, modified incisors that grow throughout the species’ lifetime — occur in both males and females and are used for fighting, marking, feeding and digging.
The sale of most new ivory was banned in 1989 to reduce the slaughter of elephants in Africa, where the population had plummeted. The ban has helped in the species’ recovery in several nations, including Tanzania.
Online sales of illegal ivory continue, however, including in the United States.
Consumers still can legally buy items such as chess sets and cutlery fashioned from antique ivory as long as the sales are accompanied by permits and certification documents.
In recent years, some countries have sought permission to sell ivory that they contend came to them legally and that has accumulated. — Sapa-AP