Rare Sale Of Ivory To Be Held Under UN Auspices

PlanetArk 28 Oct 08;

GENEVA - A rare sale of African ivory will be held under United Nations auspices over the next two weeks, with proceeds to be used for conservation purposes, officials said on Monday.

The sales will take place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, with only China and Japan permitted to buy.

Africa's elephants are protected species and cross-border trade in their ivory tusks is generally prohibited.

But signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) last year gave the four southern African states special permission to sell a combined total of 108 tonnes of raw ivory from elephants that died of natural causes or were killed in population-management programmes.

CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers will be on the spot to "supervise closely" the closed-door transactions.

The first sale will take place in Namibia on Tuesday, with the second in Botswana on Oct. 31, CITES said. Dates for the South African and Zimbabwean sales, not open to reporters or the public, will be announced later.

The two Asian nations, traditional users of ivory, were approved to buy after showing they could fight illegal domestic trade in the material used mainly in jewellery and carvings.

Wijnstekers will hold talks on the margins of the auctions with officials from both countries about how CITES will monitor trade controls "to ensure that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to sell ivory of illegal origin".

Cash raised in the one-off auctions must be used to fund programmes for nature conservation and community development projects in the areas the four countries say rising elephant populations have caused problems for local farmers.

Last week the Internet auctioneer eBay Inc said it would institute a global ban on the sale of ivory products after a conservation group found 4,000 illegal elephant ivory listings on its site. The company already prohibits cross-border sales of ivory and items made from other endangered or protected species.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

Controversial ivory sale to open
Richard Black, BBC News 28 Oct 08;

The first officially sanctioned sale of ivory in southern Africa for almost a decade opens on Tuesday.

Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe will auction more than 100 tonnes of ivory from stockpiles to buyers from China and Japan.

The money raised will go into elephant conservation projects.

Some environment groups say the sales encourage poachers elsewhere in Africa to kill elephants for ivory that can be fed into the illegal trade.

However, data collected by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic shows that seizures of illegal ivory fell in the years following the last legal sale in 1999.

The secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the UN body that sanctioned the sale, says it will monitor trade in China and Japan to make sure companies are not mixing illegally sourced ivory with these legal shipments.

The ivory trade was banned globally in 1989 because poaching was decimating elephant populations. This and the 1999 sale are the only exceptions.

Last week, the internet site eBay banned virtually all products containing ivory after lobbying from animal welfare groups.

Continental divide

The sale was approved in principle in 2002; and at last year's CITES meeting in The Hague, delegates agreed that enough precautions had been taken that the auction could go ahead, with Japan as the sole validated buyer.

Earlier this year, CITES decided that China had acted against the illegal trade with enough vigour that Chinese companies could also bid for a share of the stockpiled ivory.

This was contested by some environment groups, which argued that Chinese controls remained lax - a judgement re-iterated this week on the eve of the Namibian auction.

"We are deeply concerned that these sales will open the floodgates to additional illegal trade," said Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation.

"For some inexplicable reason some people think that all elephant populations are adequately protected and thriving. Nothing could be further from the truth."

The issue starkly illustrates the divided fortunes of elephants across Africa.

In some range states, particularly those in central and west Africa affected by civil unrest, populations are believed to be declining, partly because of poaching.

But in southern Africa, decades of protection and management have seen numbers rising by about 4% per year. South Africa has recently approved in principle the use of culling to control populations.

HAVE YOUR SAY It is a very good idea to sell ivory stockpiles. It will reduce the market value and make it less profitable to poach Fasahath Husain, Chennai, India
In this region, conservation groups argue that elephants are safer if local communities benefit financially from looking after them, whether through eco-tourism or the sale of ivory from animals dying naturally.

The 1999 auction raised about $5m for conservation and community projects. But with Chinese buyers also involved, a total bounty of $30m is said to be possible this time around.

Namibia will auction its stockpile of nine tonnes on Tuesday, followed by Botswana's much larger disposal of 44 tonnes on Friday. The South African and Zimbabwean sales take place next week.

The 1997 CITES meeting that approved this sale also declared there should be no more for 10 years.