Ivory sales Campaigners’ fear for elephants, and their own credibility

[Guest guest]

Link:

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751304

 

*Ivory sales*

 

*Round the horn*

 

Jul 17th 2008

From *The Economist* print edition

Campaigners' fear for elephants, and their own credibility

 

BANNING almost all cross-border trade in ivory, as the United Nations did in

1989, doesn't seem to have achieved its stated aim, that of ending a

smuggling business worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Soon the

world will be able to assess the effects of a move in the other direction: a

decision to let China bid at a one-off auction of legal ivory from four

African countries whose elephant populations have stabilised. Hitherto Japan

is the only country to have been authorised to make legal bids.

 

After some hard talking by Chinese officials who say they have clamped down

on the black market, and campaigning by environmental groups that disagree,

the decision went China's way at a meeting in Geneva of the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a lobby group, said this

condemns " the world's elephants to slaughter " and plays " Russian roulette "

with a species whose numbers in some places, at least, are unknown but might

be worryingly low. The campaigners' line is that legal sales merely abet the

illegal kind, especially when the black market is way beyond officialdom's

control.

 

Nobody can deny that China's black market was rampant until recently. In a

report to the UN leaked by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a

campaigning group, this month, Chinese officials admitted that between 1991

and 2002 they had lost sight of 121 tonnes of ivory, the equivalent of the

tusks from 11,000 elephants.

 

Is China observing the CITES rules now? A brief visit to China in 2007 by

inspectors from the CITES secretariat suggested that things had improved:

they said that ivory was becoming harder to find, though they came across a

shop in the city of Xi'an with ivory carvings of dubious provenance. A

bigger investigation was carried out by TRAFFIC, an independent

British-based group that monitors wildlife trade. After studying 10,000

shops between 2006 and 2008, it reported a progressive decline in the

availability of illegal ivory. This had coincided with greater police

vigilance.

 

The idea that China is cleaning up its act got another boost in March, when

over 750kg (1,650lb) of raw ivory was seized in Guangxi Province. As CITES

notes, the penalties for illegal trading include life imprisonment and

death. But the EIA, which uses undercover methods to probe the trade, says

things are not as good as they seem; in 2007 its researchers found a roomful

of illegal ivory, including an uncut tusk, for sale in the city of Dalian.

Last month they made a small find in Gansu province.

 

A more interesting question is how the legal sales now in prospect will

affect the black market. A fresh supply of legal ivory may depress the

price, and reduce the incentive to poach. TRAFFIC notes that after a legal

auction in 1999, the price fell; this led to a decline in poaching over five

years. For doctrinaire types, who oppose all trade in ivory, the forthcoming

sale is not just a challenge to endangered animals; it could be a threat to

the credibility of their best-loved arguments.

 

--

United against elephant polo

http://www.stopelephantpolo.com

http://www.freewebs.com/azamsiddiqui