Horrendous Elephant Poaching and Ivory Auctions
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The magnificent elephant generally has no natural predators due to their massive size — other than mankind, for which ivory poaching and trophy hunting is a perilous crisis. Recent auctions this week have proven the industry to be a highly lucrative ‘business’ and may have verily opened the floodgates to massive poaching, leading to annihilation and extinction of these stately creatures.
Photo DigitalArt
Namibia auctioned its 9 tons of ivory on October 28 raising $1.2 million. Zimbabwe and Botswana have also auctioned their ivory to the exclusive Chinese and Japanese buyers making $480,000 and $1.1 million respectively. On November 6, South Africa auctioned the largest cache of ivory — 51 tons — to conclude this highly controversial sale.
Renowned Kenyan conservationist, Dr. Richard Leakey, the founding Chairman for WildlifeDirect, issued a statement this week denouncing the ongoing CITES-sanctioned one-off auctions of ivory stockpiles.
The conservationist said that the auction would open up the market for illegal ivory and result in poaching, lamenting the inclusion of China — the largest destination for illegal ivory — into the legal ivory trade.
Photo Frank G. and Frances Carpenter
Photo LizardQueen
Photo DigitalArt
“I am deeply concerned about the ongoing one-off ivory auction that started on October 28 in Namibia and ended on November 6 2008, in South Africa.” said Dr. Leakey.
“I have spent many years looking at issues of elephant conservation and ivory trade and played a major role in successfully eliminating the massive ivory poaching that characterized what is considered the darkest period for African elephants in Kenya in the late 1980’s.”
“I believe that auctioning the ivory stockpiles would cause poaching to increase particularly in the central, eastern and western African elephant range states where poaching is not yet properly controlled.”
“According to the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the parties to the auction, the funds generated from this sale will be channeled directly into conservation. I am skeptical and wonder if there is a way of knowing whether these funds will actually help conservation.”
“The entry of China into the legal trade is also a cause of concern for me. It is hard to believe that a country which in 2002 scored only 5.6 out of 100 points in the CITES Elephant Trade Information Systems (ETIS) ranking — which ranks countries on how effectively they tackle illegal ivory — could have scored 63 points this year.” Dr. Leakey said. “China has admitted loosing track of 120 tons of ivory from the government’s official stockpiles in the past 12 years.”
Photo DigitalArt
Photo Jule Berlin
Photo Jule Berlin
Recently, Kenya saw the successful conviction of Chinese nationals accused of smuggling ivory that appears to have originated from 22 out of the 37 African elephant range states. The entry of China — the destination for most of the illegal ivory in the market — is an ill advised move that will only serve to open up the illegal ivory markets.
Elephants have been hunted for meat, skin, bones, and tusks. Elephant trophy hunting increased in the 19th and 20th centuries, when tourism and plantations increasingly attracted sport hunters.
In 1989, hunting of the African elephant for ivory trading was forbidden, after the elephant population fell from several million at the beginning of the 20th century to fewer than 700,000. Trophy hunting continues today. The population of African Elephants was halved during the 1980’s.
In 2006, an elephant slaughter was documented in southeastern Chad by aerial surveys. A series of poaching incidents, resulting in the killing of over 100 elephants, was carried out during the late spring and summer of 2006 in the vicinity of Zakouma National Park. This region has a decades-old history of poaching of elephants, which has caused the elephant population of the region, which exceeded 300,000 in 1970, to drop to approximately 10,000 today.
The African Elephant is officially protected by Chadian government, but the resources and manpower provided by the government (with some European Union assistance) have proven insufficient to stop the poaching.
Photo Jule Berlin
Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape Province 72km from Port Elizabeth.
Photo Exfordy
Photo Exfordy
Human encroachment into or adjacent to natural areas where Bush Elephants occur has led to recent research into methods of safely driving groups of elephants away from humans, including the discovery that playback of the recorded sounds of angry honey bees are remarkably effective at prompting elephants to flee an area.
The protection that the elephant now receives has been partially successful, but despite increasingly severe penalties imposed by governments against illegal hunting, poaching is still common. CITES still considers elephants as threatened with extinction.
Reports already indicate that poaching is increasing in most parts of Africa. The Kenya Wildlife Service — Kenya’s official wildlife authority — has reported that poaching is increasing in key elephant zones.
Central and west Africa have also witnessed escalating poaching in recent times. The Democratic Republic of Congo, caught up in a complex civil strife, has become a haven for poachers.
Although CITES secretary-general Willem Wijnstekers says that southern African states have everything under control, it cannot be true for Zimbabwe. Reports by bloggers at WildlifeDirect.org and on independent media show that Zimbabwe is experiencing an unprecedented decimation of wildlife.
Reports indicate that Zimbabwe may have lost up to 80% of its wildlife. There is reason to believe that a large percentage of this wildlife consists of elephants.
“As the hammer fell for the last time in South Africa on Thursday, we cannot in any way say that this is a victory for conservation. It is indeed a great disservice to conservation.” says Dr. Leakey.
“I categorically denounce this auction and call on CITES to rethink how they run endangered species affairs. It should not be lost to CITES that they exist to protect the endangered species against trade malpractices, not to serve partisan interests that work against the species.” he concluded.
Elephants in the evening, Hwange, Zimbabwe. Photo Kevin Zim
Photo Tim and Annette
Photo Mgiganteus
WildlifeDirect is a non-profit conservation organization based in Kenya that uses the internet to create awareness about conservation issues and to raise funds for conservation through blogs written by field conservationists.
The organization endeavors to create a movement powerful enough to produce a virtual endowment capable of reversing the catastrophic loss of habitats and species. WildlifeDirect is registered as a charity in the USA and in Kenya. Visit their website to learn more.
Source: WildlifeDirect and Wikipedia
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Isn’t it terrible! People are just so cruel.
I am also deeply concerned about this onslaught.It is my sincere hope that organizations such as WildlifeDirect will become more and more ubiquitous and that the society will embrace the values of these movements in order to save our endangered species.
To a greater extent, I think that corrupt and mafia-type of leaders are making a lot of dirty money by indirectly encouraging poaching of these endangered species.
It is indeed terrible, Care Bear. To say the very least.
Clement, I think you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head in your statement about mafia-types etc. Where there are large sums of money to be made underground, these are the types that generally control it, and they’re very difficult and dangerous to deal with.
But entities such as WildlifeDirect and others like them help to create awareness. The more that people are made aware, the less many are inclined to support the actions in buying these types of items. When there is no market, there is no trade.
Similar types of trades affect a lot more than our elephants as well — other animals which are near extinction. It’s heartbreaking.
It seems like headway has been made in protecting elephants and other wildlife but we still have a long way to go on this subject. The ban on ivory helps a lot, but allowing the private sales of legally acquired tusks does not help since this info is easy to fake.
It’s a said thing to see what is happening, and unfortunately there is no much to be done as the main problem is that there is no one capable of stopping illegal steps in these African countries.
When there is money to be gained from the sale of stockpiles, whether these profits “go to conservation” or not, it creates a greater demand for that product… no matter that procuring that product – poaching of elephants – is illegal. the demand for the product is dangerous, and cannot be controlled by CITES or NGOs with little international authority. I think the global demand for ivory may be able to be controlled with incentives for nations like china and japan, if they refrain from importing.. somehow.. this is a task for the international environmental lawyers… a nebulous one at that.
Well it certainly doesn’t help the situation when those who oppose it are in effect contributing to it, Judit.
That’s exactly it, Jenny, it aides in contributing to the demand. With stockpiles such as these, you can see just how difficult it is to control as it stands.
Hopefully the ivory being sold wont get a particularly good price, and flood the market. What do people even use ivory for now days?
It is always distressing to read stories like this, but I am glad that you are spreading the word. Nice photos of elephants, you just wonder how anyone could harm such a fantastic animal.