Zimbabwe has opened an international conference in a bid to win global support for its campaign to be allowed to sell its stockpile of seized ivory.
If the southern African country is not permitted to sell off its 130 tons of ivory, estimated to be worth $600 million, officials warn it may quit the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
The three-day conference started Monday, 23rd May 2022 at Hwange National Park, the country’s largest wildlife park situated in south-western Zimbabwe.
Representatives from 16 African countries, as well as Japan and China from Asia, major consumers of ivory, were in attendance based on the official report.
Penultimate week, envoys from some European Union (EU) countries such as Britain, as well as the United States and Canada, were guided through heavily guarded vaults in Harare that were filled with piles of elephant tusks to win international support for legal sales of the ivory.
Zimbabwe’s effort to sell the said ivory is controversial with many conservation groups opposing it, saying any sale of ivory encourages poaching of the pachyderms, i.e. illegal killing of wildlife.
The conference “is sending a dangerous signal to poachers and criminal syndicates that elephants are mere commodities, and that ivory trade could be resumed, heightening the threat to the species,” said a coalition of 50 wildlife and animal rights organizations from across the globe in a joint statement issued the same Monday.
Southern African countries had twice been permitted to sell off their ivory stocks to Japan and China in 1997 and 2008 and those limited sales resulted in “a sharp escalation” in poaching across the continent, said the coalition.
“Legalizing the ivory trade, including authorizing another ‘one-off’ sale could have similar disastrous consequences.” the groups stated.
Zimbabwe had argued that its elephant population was growing rapidly at between 5% to 8% per year, a rate it said was unsustainable. It disclosed that the country was desperately in need of the funds from the sales of the ivory to manage its elephant population, which it said had grown to a ‘dangerous’ size.
Zimbabwe’s estimated 100,000 elephants are double the carrying capacity of its national parks, according to its parks officials. Hence, the overcrowded elephants were destroying the trees and shrubs that remained vital for them and other wildlife.
It’s noteworthy neighbouring Botswana has the world’s largest elephant population with more than 130,000. Together Zimbabwe and Botswana reportedly possess nearly 50% of the world’s elephants. The two countries are apparently struggling to cope with the booming numbers.
Opposition is coming from Kenya and other members of the African Elephant Coalition, whose 32 members are mostly East and West African countries that have fewer elephants. They argue that reopening legal international trade in ivory trade, even for a single auction, would result in increased poaching.
CITES banned the international ivory trade in 1989 to curtail poaching. In addition to banning ivory sales, CITES in 2019 also imposed restrictions on the sales of wild elephants caught in Zimbabwe and Botswana, a move that pleased some conservationists but dismayed officials struggling to manage their overcrowded parks.
There is a flourishing illegal trade in ivory in which international syndicates fund poachers to kill elephants and saw off their ivory tusks. The ivory is then smuggled overseas, where there is its demand for production of jewelry and trinkets.
Increased poaching and loss of habitat have made Africa’s elephant populations more endangered, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) stated last year.
Zimbabwe and Botswana say they are ill-equipped to deal with poachers without the money from ivory sales, especially because earnings from tourism have dwindled due to COVID—19 related travel restrictions since 2020.
Rather than encouraging poaching of wildlife, African countries ought to work towards leveraging its impact on tourism, which remains one of the greatest boosts of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) across the globe.
Hence, they are enjoined to work out modalities in this regard, by creating formidable policies and ensuring their apt implementation headlong.
Like this:
Like Loading...
