Talks lined up on Tanzania`s 5bn/- tusks
By The guardian reporter


14th January 2010


Tanzania has announced plans to approach countries with huge stockpiles of elephant tusks for consultations on ways to dispose of their shares ahead of a CITES meeting in Doha, Qatar, in March.

However, speaking exclusively to The Guardian on Tuesday, Natural Resources and Tourism minister Shamsa Mwangunga said she was not in a position to comment on differences said to exist between Tanzania and Kenya on how to dispose of their stockpiles.

She based her cautious stand on “fears of prejudicing or otherwise interfering with the upcoming (Doha) deliberations”.

The minister confirmed recent reports that Tanzania had approached CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) for permission to sell 89,848 kgs of elephant tusks worth about 5 billion/-.

She said she would not make any further remarks on the planned sale until after Doha.

The Guardian had sought the minister for comment on a front page story it published on Monday, quoting Kenya as having vowed to block Tanzania from getting a CITES permit to dispose of the said elephant tusks.

The story was based on a report by DirectWildlife, a Kenyan blogger associated with environmental protection issues, saying a Kenya business newspaper had revealed a rift between the two East African countries because of the stockpiling of the tusks.

Kenya’s Business Daily is said to have reported that the two neighbouring states held opposing views on ivory trade proposals sent to CITES ahead of the 15th conference of the parties to the convention (CoP15) in Doha.

It is further reported that Kenya has submitted a proposal for a total ban on the business trade, while Tanzania is “pushing for a new trading window to allow it to sell its ivory stockpile to fund conservation programmes”.

Kenyan wildlife officials are said to view Tanzania’s plans as a betrayal by a neighbouring country with whom they share ecosystems such as Amboseli (for Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro area) and Maasai Mara (for Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park).

Kenya is also understood to believe that Tanzania’s proposal to have the two states’ elephants moved from Appendix I to Appendix II in the CITES rankings, thus allowing the latter country to carry out one-off trade in stockpiled tusks, will most likely increase poaching in both nations’ ecosystems.

Zambia is meanwhile reported to be pushing for an opportunity to sell 21,692-kgs of stockpiled elephant tusks as well as raw hides.

Business Daily suggested that this was confirmation that a CITES ruling allowing Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell their stockpiles – after the convention’s 14th meeting in 2008 – will have set a bad precedent.

It is widely feared that allowing Tanzania and Zambia to sell their stockpiles of tusks will make several other African countries follow suit, “thus setting the pattern of bad decisions into a spiral”.

The paper argued that result would be a rise in demand and consequently an upsurge in poaching - possibly to the 1970s and 1980s levels that saw the population of elephants in Kenya cut down from 168,000 in 1969 to just 16,000 in 1989.

It added that Kenyan officials have vowed to fight these proposals “to the last man” and that countries rallying behind Kenya in the spirited fight to block the proposal by Tanzania and Zambia include Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

“It would be untold victory for elephants should the pro-trade proposals be voted out and a total ban in all ivory trade is imposed,” a representative of one of the latter countries was quoted as saying.

CITES, also known as the Washington Convention, is an international agreement between governments that was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1973 at a meeting of members of the "International Union for Conservation of Nature" International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. It accords varying degrees of protection to more than 33,000 species of animals and plants.


SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

Very interesting. Lots of tusks.

Questions are:
1) how is it going to impact hunters?
2) which solution would be best to increase elephant populations and maitain large parks?

Open trade of non-trophy-hunted elephants could reduce the oppportunities for ele hunting licenses? Trophy or non-trophy (when the governemtn or someone in the government)) would latter sell the tusks)???