Let Elephants Keep Their Ivory

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As usual, elephants are on the agenda at the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP14), which will be held in The Hague, the Netherlands, from 3 to 15 June 2007. The 55th meeting of the CITES Standing Committe will be held on the 2nd of June 2007.

This is a video message asking the members to let elephants keep their ivory. Dame Daphne Sheldrick shares her views on the ivory trade and the effects of poaching. As can be read in the African Elephant facts courtesy of Wildlife Campus, you can see that South Africa is in favour of culling and utilising all the ivory collected.

Brief History

In spite of the ban on African Ivory, CITES permitted a once-off trade of stockpiled African ivory in 1999. Conservationists, like Dame Sheldrick, believe that this has resulted in (and will continue resulting in) an increase in poaching, because legal trade makes illicit trade easier. Watch the anti-poaching video on the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website.

During this meeting, CITES are considering new “once-off” trade requests. This video is asking people who care about elephants and wildlife to demand that the stockpiles of ivory be destroyed.

It also asks that we (people) quelch our desire for products made from wildlife. If there’s no demand, then there’s no killing. Then our children’s children can enjoy encountering wildlife in their natural habitats. Forever.

With special thanks to Dame Daphne Sheldrick from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Follow-up to the Meeting

“CITES agreement reached on ivory debate” AWF, 15 June 2007

Eighteen years after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) banned the ivory trade, Ministers from the African elephant range states have for the first time achieved a regional consensus on how to address this highly charged issue.

Under the compromise agreement reached today, each of four southern African countries – Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe – will be permitted to make a single sale of ivory on top of the one-off sale totaling 60 tons that was agreed in principle in 2002 and given the go-ahead earlier this month.

The ivory for these new sales will consist of all government-owned stocks that have been registered and verified as of 31 January 2007. Each sale is to consist of a single shipment per destination and may only go to countries whose internal controls on ivory sales have been verified as being sufficient by the CITES Secretariat.

The agreement stipulates that after these shipments have been completed no new proposals for further sales from these four countries are to be considered by CITES during a “resting period” of nine years that will commence as soon as the new sales have been completed. Read full story.