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Contact: Hugh Vickeryin Santiago, |
| For Immediate Release: November 12, 2002 | 011-56-9-605- 7360 or |
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CITES Conference Votes to Allow Three African Nations
One-Time Sale of Ivory Under Strict Conditions
The member nations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) today voted to allow three African nations to conduct a one-time sale of ivory stock collected from elephants that have died naturally. The sales, which will occur no sooner than May 2004, include strict conditions designed to ensure the sales do not undermine ongoing elephant monitoring efforts or lead to an increase in poaching.
Meanwhile, proposals by Zimbabwe and Zambia to sell ivory were rejected. The United States spoke in opposition to both of those proposals because of concerns that neither country can control poaching or illegal trade in ivory.
The three nations allowed a one-time sale of ivory - Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa - sharply narrowed their requests after the United States offered an alternative proposal to ensure the longtime conservation of elephant populations. Following the lead of the United States, they included provisions from the American proposal, removing a request for annual sales and inserting language that would give the CITES' Secretariat and Standing Committee authority to stop the one-time sale if they determined that the conditions to ensure long-term conservation of elephants had not been met.
These provisions include:
In addition, the one-time sale can only occur if the CITES Secretariat and Standing Committee determine Botswana, Namibia or South Africa or the importing countries are in compliance with the regulatory controls and that the sales would not be detrimental to elephant populations.
"The United States played an important role in ensuring that any sale approved by the member nations of CITES included tight controls and conditions that ensure that elephant populations are not jeopardized," said Assistant Secretary of State John Turner, one of the two leaders of the U.S. delegation.
"The United States has been one of the world's major supporters of elephant conservation and has worked closely with elephant range nations on a wide variety of conservation programs," said Assistant Secretary of Interior Craig Manson, the other leader of the U.S. Delegation. "We are confident that we have ensured that the conservation and recovery of both Asian and African elephants will continue."
The United States recognizes that Botswana, Namibia and South Africa have engaged in effective elephant conservation and their populations are now beginning to crowd the available habitat and threaten local communities. At the same time, the United States has expressed concerns about the effect allowing ivory sales would have on both the MIKE program and poaching.
The member nations of CITES banned international trade in ivory and elephant products in 1989 after widespread poaching had devastated elephant populations throughout Africa and Asia. In 1997, the nations voted to allow Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to undertake a one-time sale of their existing ivory stocks.
This year Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe proposed to allow sale of their existing stocks of ivory as well as future trade in ivory and other elephant products, such as hides, leather goods, and ivory carvings under an annual quota.
The countries argued that, because of their successful conservation efforts, elephant populations have recovered to the point where they are beginning to crowd their habitat, leading to human-elephant conflicts. They contended that sale of ivory stocks, which come from elephants that have died naturally, could finance management of their herds and promote the species' long-term conservation.
Meanwhile, Zambia requested that its elephant population be downlisted from Appendix I of the convention, which bars commercial trade, to the less-restrictive Appendix II, allowing it to sell ivory stocks.
Other African nations, led by Kenya and joined by India, strongly disagreed, arguing that any resumption in ivory sales would revive the ivory industry and lead to the widespread poaching that decimated herds in the 1980s. Elephants have far more economic value in drawing tourists to African countries than they do in providing ivory for sale, these nations contended.
The United States has long been one of the world's major supporters of African and Asian elephant conservation. With the passage by the U.S. Congress of the African Elephant Conservation Act and the Asian Elephant Conservation Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has provided millions of dollars in cost-share grants to nations in Africa and Southern and Southeast Asia.
For example, the United States provided grants to Botswana last year to conduct research on elephants, manage populations, and reduce elephant-human conflict. In Kenya, grants helped fund purchase of non-lethal equipment for game rangers to combat poaching, including support for aircraft that are vitally important to locating and tracking poachers. In Gabon, grants provided start-up funds for Langoue National Park, which provides important habitat for elephants.
Likewise, grants from the United States helped fund projects to conserve Asian elephants including construction of electric fences to keep elephants out of farmers' fields in India, designation and management of an area to conserve 1,000 elephants in Borneo, and development of model training programs in wildlife law enforcement, monitoring and environmental education in Thailand.
In addition, the United States is a major backer of international law enforcement and elephant monitoring efforts. Support for the multinational Lusaka Agreement Task Force has led to significant arrests of ivory smugglers, including the confiscation of 6 tons of illegal ivory in Singapore earlier this year.
The United States also has contributed nearly $700,000 to support the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, an international effort to monitor elephant populations and assess the impact of poaching.
Looking to the future, the United States is a leader in initiating the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, a cooperative effort involving 30 governments, international organizations, environmental and business interests to help the countries of the Congo Basin conserve 30 million acres of habitat for forest elephants in central Africa. Believed to be the largest conservation project in African history, the project includes the establishment of 27 new national parks.
The Congo Basin, contains a quarter of the world's tropical forest and is a region of extraordinary biological richness, including important habitat for elephants, but its forests are being degraded at the rate of 2 million acres every year.
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