INCREASED elephant poaching is the teared outcome of a proposal by three African countries that the ivory trade be resumed. Zimbabwe Botswana and Namibia want to overturn a ban on the trade so they can sell their stockpiles of ivory.
The vote on ivory trading will be the most controversial issue at an international meeting on wild life protection which begins in Zimbabwe today. Animal rights activists say a lilting of the ban, in 1989, will endanger the African elephant.
Some 130 nations are due to attend the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. South Africa says it will support its neighbours' proposal. Foremost among wealthy nations in favour of resuming the ivory trade is Japan which is also pressing for trade in minke and gray bryde whales to be approved.
The elephant is amen g 2,000 species placed by CITES under the Appendix One, classification prohibiting international trade in endangered plants and animals. The downgrading of the elephant to Appendix Two would allow regulated trade in ivory.
The ivory ban was imposed after the African elephant population had been substantially reduced by decades of controlled poaching across the continent. During the 1980s, as many as 70,000 elephants were killed each year in Africa.
In Kenya, which led the campaign to have the ivory trade made illegal, the population declined from 130,000 in 1973 to 20,000 in 1989. However since then the numbers have risen by more than 6,000. If it were possible to centre the sale and movement of ivory, I would withdraw my objections to the resumption of the trade," the internationally renowned Kenyan conservationist, Mr Richard Leakey, says. He will deliver a keynote address in Harare on Wednesday. "But the fact of the matter is that it's not possible. Official corruption is a way of life in Africa. Once you reintroduce the trade, you open up the way for wholesale poaching and smuggling." A former director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, Dr Leakey attracted worldwide attention in 1989 when he incinerated 12 tonnes of ivory worth millions of pounds. Since then, Kenya, has regularly destroyed its ivory stocks.
"Certain southern African states argue they need the money from the legal sale of ivory," says Dr Leakey. "But in fact the sums they would raise this way would be very small. What it's really about is getting rid of their ivory stocks and making some individuals a lot of money".